Introducing Stringtel, my new free new gTLD tool

I’ve launched Stringtel, a free, industry-first string discovery and risk mitigation tool for new gTLD applicants.

Stringtel is designed to help applicants reduce the risk of their chosen gTLD strings being banned or incurring extra costs during the application process, as well as helping them discover potentially valuable undelegated strings.

The TL;DR

Stringtel gives you data that will help you pick a good string to apply for, and tells you some of the risks that string might present during the application process.

The goal is to help applicants avoid wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on crappy applications.

Risk mitigation

Stringtel implements the string-related rules in the latest version of ICANN’s New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, along with other risk factors, leveraging a database of almost a million possibly problematic strings, to offer applicants a quick look into issues that could kill or complicate their applications.

Enter a string and Stringtel will tell you if it would be blocked outright under AGB rules, or could trigger additional analysis, objections, fees, or contention with other applicants.

Stringtel does dozens of risk checks, along with countless associated string similarity checks, to give you a shortlist of the most likely reasons your application might fail.

Opportunity identification

New gTLDs might have a better chance of succeeding when they reflect how domains are already being used.

Stringtel analyzes over 180 million domains across .com, .net and .org, counting how often specific strings appear immediately to the left of the dot.

If a string is already widely used as a domain ending, that’s a signal of existing demand. For example, if tens of thousands of domains already end in “bakery”, that suggests a .bakery gTLD could have a ready-made market.

Essentially, Stringtel shows you where registrants are already behaving as if the dot were somewhere else — and where a new gTLD could turn that behavior into shorter domains.

It also helps filter out strings that look appealing but have little real-world usage, reducing the risk of applying for a gTLD nobody actually wants.

And because everyone keeps asking…

No, Stringtel does not record your searches. The data would be useless. I have no visibility whatsoever into what you’re searching for. Neither does anybody else.

Thanks to the sponsors

Many thanks go to Stringtel’s two launch sponsors: Hello Registry and John Matson Consulting.

Hello Registry, a venture of leading ccTLD registries CIRA (.ca) and SIDN (.nl) hosted a webinar on March 31 explaining how to apply for and operate a new gTLD.

Matson has launched TLD.fit, a financial modelling tool that helps new gTLD applicants build their business cases before they pull the trigger on an application.

.latino gTLD to launch soon

The long-dormant .latino gTLD is set to launch soon, targeting the global Spanish-speaking diaspora.

Registry DISH DBS had originally planned for .latino to be a dot-brand for its Spanish-language satellite TV services, but it’s had a change of heart and now expects it to launch fully open and unrestricted.

General availability has been pencilled in for June 12, according to the registry’s web site and ICANN documents, with sunrise running for the 30 days immediately prior.

It will be the registry’s second launch this year. It went to GA with .mobile last month, so far racking up a modest roughly 4,000 registrations.

.latino will compete against .lat, part of XYZ.com’s stable, which sells for under $2 for a first-year reg and currently has about 125,000 names in its zone.

Amazon readies .pay gTLD

Amazon’s gradual trickle of gTLD releases nlooks set to continue this year, with the company publishing plans for .pay this week.

But it appears that the space will be strictly controlled at first, with general availability not coming until well into 2027.

Amazon’s planning to take .pay to its obligatory 30-day sunrise period, where only registered trademark holders may register names, from April 13, according to ICANN documentation.

From May 13, the company is planning a Limited Registration Period, during which eligibility is restricted to those “that conduct payment transactions online using an approved Payment Service Provider or Third-Party Payment Processor.”

Registrants will have to use their domains “in connection with payment-related services, including but not limited to processing payments, facilitating e-commerce transactions, or providing payment gateway services” or risk suspension.

General availability is not expected until February next year.

ICANN maps out new gTLD timeline

ICANN’s 85th public meeting kicked off in Mumbai at the weekend, the last community face-to-face before the next round of new gTLDs kicks off, and the Org took the time to spell out exactly what is expected to happen and when.

Surprisingly, given ICANN’s track record, it will hit its target of April 2026 to open the doors to applications. Unsurprisingly, given ICANN’s track record, it’s picked April 30 — the last possible day of its promised window — to do so.

The application window will remain open for 104 days. Applicants will have until August 12 to file their paperwork. It doesn’t matter when they hit submit; it’s not first-come, first-served.

Then, the process goes into quiet mode for at least two months while ICANN filters through the applications. If there’s about the same number of applications at the 2012 round — about 2,000 — ICANN reckons Reveal Day could come before ICANN 87, which begins in Muscat October 17.

So far, the timeline closely follows the 2012 round, but this time there’s a new wrinkle — applicants can change their gTLD strings to preselected “replacement strings” if they want to.

From Reveal Day, they’ll have 14 days to swap their strings if, for example, they find themselves in a contention set they don’t like the look of or if they get the vibe that they’re probably face objections.

After those two weeks are up, its String Confirmation day, expected some time in November. From that moment, the applicants are locked into their string of choice.

That’s also the day when the timer starts on the objections period, 104 days in which companies and organizations can object to applications based on criteria such as intellectual property rights, the public interest, and community rights.

Governments can also object on essentially any basis, as long as it’s well-articulated. Unilateral GAC Early Warnings are available, but a full consensus of the Governmental Advisory Committee would be needed to stand a chance at nuking an application outright.

The objection period should end some time next February. While that’s going on, some time in December, ICANN will conduct the Prioritization Draw, a lottery to decide the order in which applications will be processed.

The 2012 draw was important because the gTLDs that were first out of the traps had a measurable first-mover advantage in terms of speculative registrations. With hundreds of gTLDs now on the market, I believe it will be less important this time around.

After the draw, applicants will have to wait half a year before they are finally notified which contention sets, if any, they fit into, after the results of the String Similarity Review have been published.

ICANN has yet to select the panel for this review or create its detailed guidelines, but it’s expect to name it chosen vendor some time in Q2.

Identity Digital acquires another gTLD

Identity Digital has bulked out its already substantial portfolio of gTLDs, taking over the ICANN registry contract for another 2012-round string earlier this month.

The company is now running .onl via a newish affiliate called Jolly Host, according to ICANN records. It had been managed by Germany-based iRegistry, the original applicant.

.onl — short for “online” but with substantially fewer registrations than .online — had just shy of 24,000 registered names in its zone file today, but has been experiencing fairly consistent growth over the last few years.

It had 19,787 domains under management at the end of October, a lifetime peak.

Some of the growth may be due to the sub-$4 first-year fees currently being charged by some registrars. I believe the registry annual renewal fee is around $10, but some registrars mark that up to $25-$35.

.onl appears in the storefronts of most major registrars already.

Sav.com owner takes over .radio gTLD

The .radio gTLD appears to have changed hands, with a young registry affiliated with Sav.com taking over the reins.

ICANN documentation shows that Digity, a company led by Sav CEO Anthos Chrysanthou, took over the registry contract for the gTLD last month.

The original registry was the European Broadcasting Union, the entity behind the popular Eurovision Song Contest (.eurovision also exists, but is not used, with the EBU using a .vote domain during its annual broadcast).

Digity is already the contracted registry for .case, a former dot-brand it acquired from CentralNic a few years ago.

Apparently intended to be repurposed as a namespace for the legal profession, .case is yet to properly launch and has just a few dozen domains under management.

.radio, by contrast, if not exactly thriving in volume terms, is actually being sold and used, with about 3,000 DUM at a price point of just under $400 a year at the low end.

Some registration restrictions and pricing variations apply, and the gTLD does not have particularly broad registrar coverage.

British readers may be interested to learn that one of the highest-profile .radio domains belongs to oddball former DJ and TV host Noel Edmonds.

Refunds galore as gTLD losers finally bow out

There’s been a wave of withdrawals of new gTLD applications over the last couple of months after ICANN gave 15 companies their final notice that it was time to ask for a refund or lose their money forever.

But so far just seven unsuccessful applications from the 2012 round have been withdrawn, from the 19 that were eligible, according to my records.

Notably, all of the remaining applications for .mail, .corp and .home, strings that were banned on account of name collision risks, have been pulled. Google, Amazon and GMO Registry will all get partial refunds of their application fees.

Two applications for the fiercely contested .hotel have also been yanked, with Identity Digital and Radix getting their refunds. GRS Domains, Despegar and Fegistry still have not withdrawn, according to ICANN records.

ICANN had classed .hotel as a “already been delegated to other applicant” gTLD, which isn’t completely accurate. The gTLD is currently in pre-delegation testing, however.

There are plenty of other applications from 2012 that have not been withdrawn, despite the fact that the gTLD in question is already live and freely available for registration.

L’Oreal, for example, is still clinging on to its bid for .salon, despite the fact that Identity Digital has been running it for years and has about 4,000 names in its zone.

Similarly, Planet Dot Eco, DotConnectAfrica and Commercial Connect do not appear to has asked for refunds for their respective bids for .eco, .africa and .shop, despite all three being live and run by successful rival applicants for years.

Asia Green IT System has not withdrawn its bids for .islam, .halal, and .persiangulf, which were banned following government objections. AGIT was essentially kicked out of the industry when its business with five other Middle-East themed gTLDs comprehensively failed.

The 2012 round’s most-stubborn applicant, Nameshop, still has a live bid for .idn. Indian conglomerate Tata has also not pulled its bid for .tata, which failed on geographic similarity grounds.

In a resolution passed last September, ICANN’s board decided to give all of its remaining 2012-round applicants 90 days notice that they could withdraw or lose their money. It’s not clear when that 90-day period began.

Salesforce to apply for a dot-brand

Salesforce has become the most significant company to date to announce it plans to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD.

Specifically, the company plans to apply for a dot-brand, according to a disclosure made by David Lawrence, software engineering architect at Salesforce and IETF liaison on ICANN’s board of directors.

The disclosure came when the board approved the new gTLD program’s latest Applicant Guidebook at the conclusion of the ICANN 84 public meeting in Dublin last month.

While the IETF liaison is a non-voting role, he nevertheless recused himself from the AGB discussion, saying: “I work for an employer to apply for a brand TLD.”

While there are dozens of companies and organizations with public plans for new gTLDs, most of them are little-known brands associated with the blockchain space.

By contrast, Salesforce is, according to Wikipedia, the 61st-largest company in the world, with a market cap of $238 billion.

Glitch redux: ICANN screws up new gTLD security again

No lessons learned from 2012? ICANN admitted this morning that a glitch in its Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program exposed the identities of more than a dozen companies to their rivals.

The Org fessed up that some companies looking to get pre-approved as RSPs were able to see “identifiable organizational information” belonging to another user when using ICANN’s technical testing system.

“A total of 14 of 26 organizations using RST OT&E were affected. All affected organizations have been notified,” ICANN said. “No personal data was exposed, with the exception of a single minor and limited instance.”

It doesn’t sound like any gTLD application intentions were revealed — that part of the program doesn’t open until next year.

There were probably not too many surprises among the leaks. The landscape of the RSP market is well understood.

The only exceptions that spring to mind would be ccTLD registries that have not yet revealed their plans for the gTLD space, and completely new market entrants that have not yet tipped their hand.

The glitch sounds remarkably familiar for ICANN watchers with long memories. A bug discovered in 2015 exposed much more data, and about applicants themselves, but it was only exploited by one person on a handful of occasions.

That “glitch” led to allegations of hacking and trade secret theft and a long-running Independent Review Process case that wasn’t resolved until October 2023.

ICANN said it has taken down its testing environment to fix the bug and has hired an outside consultant to kick the tires.

This delay means testing will be offline for around two weeks, coming back November 12 at the earliest, and the reveal date for the list of participating RSPs has been pushed back from December 9 to an unspecified future date we realistically have to assume will be in the new year.

It’s not expected to delay the April 2026 opening of the next application round.

Amazon delays book and fashion gTLDs

Two gTLD launches pencilled in for next month seem to have been delayed a year.

Amazon Registry has filed updated launch dates for two Japanese-language TLDs: .書籍 (.xn--rovu88b), meaning “book”, and .ファッション (.xn--bck1b9a5dre4c), meaning “fashion”.

Both had been previously scheduled to go to general availability in early November, but new dates published by ICANN have pushed both back to the same dates in 2026.

Both have already completed their mandatory sunrise periods, back in late 2016. If they do go GA next year, it will have been a full decade between trademark protection and free-for-all.

Amazon has been slowly releasing its long-dormant stockpile of gTLDs recently. Three — .you, .talk and .fast — went GA earlier this month. Three others — .free, .hot and .spot — launched in the first half of the year.