Namecheap

Last updated
Namecheap, Inc.
Namecheap Logo.svg
Type of business Private
Founded2000;24 years ago (2000)
Headquarters
Phoenix, Arizona
,
United States
Area servedWorldwide
CEORichard Kirkendall
Key peopleRichard Kirkendall (CEO)
Hillan Klein (COO)
Sergii Smirnov (CTO)
Industry Web service
Services Domain Name Registration, Web Hosting, VPN
URL namecheap.com

Namecheap is an American ICANN-accredited domain name registrar [1] and web hosting company, based in Phoenix, Arizona. The company was founded in 2000 by Richard Kirkendall [2] and has since grown to become one of the largest independent domain registrars in the world, with over 10 million customers and over 17 million domains under management. [3] [4]

Contents

Namecheap offers domain name services, including domain registration, transfer, and renewal, as well as domain privacy protection and other value-added services. In addition, Namecheap also offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.

Namecheap has been accepting Bitcoin as a payment method since March 2013. [5]

On 15 February 2023, Delhi High Court ordered Indian IT Ministry to block Namecheap and other domain registrars over cybersquatting and non-compliance with India's IT Rules, 2021. [6] [7] [8]

Advocacy

ICANN price caps decision

In July 2019, Namecheap was one of the organizations that filed a reconsideration request to ICANN asking for a review of the decision to remove price caps on .org and .info TLDs. [9] [10] As of September 2019, ICANN has ignored such requests. [11]

Termination of service to Russian accounts

In February 2022, Namecheap announced that they would terminate services to Russian accounts due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, citing "war crimes and human rights violations". Existing users were given a one-week grace period to move their domains. [12] The next day, the deadline was extended by another 2 weeks. If users did not move their domains, their websites became inaccessible, even if the domain registration period had not yet passed. The company also announced that it would be offering free anonymous domain registration and web hosting to all protest and anti-war websites in Russia or Belarus. [13] Namecheap at the same time said it had over 1,000 employees located in Ukraine, comprising most of its support staff, mostly in Kharkiv (which was a major location of fighting). [14]

Related Research Articles

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last non-empty label of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is .com. Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations by the ICANN, an Internet multi-stakeholder community, which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Assigned Numbers Authority</span> Standards organization overseeing IP addresses

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet Protocol–related symbols and Internet numbers.

The domain name .moe is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name comes from the Japanese slang word moe, indicating its intended purpose in the marketing of products or services deemed moe.

The domain com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Created in the first group of Internet domains at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for subdomains registered by commercial organizations. Later, the domain opened for general purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.org</span> Generic top-level domain

The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from 'organization'. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by the Public Interest Registry since 2003. The domain was originally "intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else." It is commonly used by non-profit organizations, open-source projects, and communities, but is an open domain that can be used by anyone. The number of registered domains in .org has increased from fewer than one million in the 1990s, to ten million in 2012, and held steady between ten and eleven million since then.

A domain name registrar is a company, person, or office that manages the reservation of Internet domain names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network Solutions</span> American-based technology company

Network Solutions, LLC, formerly Web.com is an American-based technology company and a subsidiary of Web.com, the 4th largest .com domain name registrar with over 6.7 million registrations as of August 2018. In addition to being a domain name registrar, Network Solutions provides web services such as web hosting, website design and online marketing, including search engine optimization and pay per click management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.in</span> Internet country code top-level domain for India

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">.so</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Somalia

.so is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Somalia. After a long absence, the .so domain was officially relaunched on November 1, 2010, by .SO Registry, which is regulated by the nation's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It was launched through various accredited registrars around the world.

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Enom, Inc. is a domain name registrar and Web hosting company that also offers other products closely tied to domain names, such as SSL certificates, email services, and website building software. As of May 2016, it manages over 15 million domains.

WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomous systems, but it is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912.

Dynadot is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar and web host company founded by software engineer Todd Han in 2002. Dynadot's headquarters is located in San Mateo, California, with offices in Zhengzhou and Beijing, China, as well as Toronto, Canada.

Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain name from a domain name registrar.

Namecoin is a cryptocurrency originally forked from bitcoin software. It uses proof-of-work algorithm. Like bitcoin, it is limited to 21 million coins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Move Your Domain Day</span> Former annual observance

Move Your Domain Day, or MoveYourDomainDay, was an annual observance encouraging owners of domain names to transfer their domain registration away from registrars that supported the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as part of the protests against SOPA. It was first held on 29 December 2011, the idea coming from a post on Reddit as a protest against prominent registrar GoDaddy's support for SOPA. In 2012, rival registrar Namecheap began an initiative to make Move Your Domain Day an annual event. Subsequent events were held on 22 January 2013, 5 February 2014, 27 January 2015, 2 February 2016, and 6 March 2018. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, and domain registrars Name.com and Hover have also participated. Namecheap has defined the initiative as "an annual protest and a commemoration of sorts that will continue to shine a light on the issue of a free and open internet". No major Move Your Domain Day events have taken place since 2018.

Hetzner Online GmbH is a company and data center operator based in Gunzenhausen, Bavaria, in Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Domains</span> Domain registration service by Google

Google Domains was a domain name registrar and domain management service operated by Google. It was launched in 2014 and continued to operate, mostly as a beta service, until most of its assets were acquired by Squarespace on September 7, 2023. The sale included databases of registered domains, customer accounts, and registry accreditation.

easyDNS Technologies Inc. is a Canadian Internet service provider which supplies DNS and web hosting services and operates a mail service called EasyMail. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

References

  1. ↑ "InterNIC - Registrar List". InterNIC. 2017-04-23. Retrieved 2017-04-23.
  2. ↑ Spadafora, Anthony (October 2, 2019). "Namecheap Review". Tom’s Guide . Retrieved October 28, 2019.
  3. ↑ "Hosting Provider Namecheap to Stop Services for Russians Domains". Cyber Security News. March 2, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  4. ↑ Spadafora, Anthony (October 2, 2019). "Namecheap Review". Tom’s Guide . Retrieved October 28, 2019.
  5. ↑ Bustillos, Maria (April 1, 2013). "The Bitcoin Boom". The New Yorker . Retrieved October 8, 2019.
  6. ↑ Thapliyal, Nupur (2023-02-15). "Take Action Against Domain Name Registrars For Not Complying With IT Rules: Delhi High Court To IT Ministry". www.livelaw.in. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  7. ↑ Mathi, Sarvesh (2023-03-14). "Why Namecheap and four other domain registrars are blocked in India". MediaNama. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  8. ↑ Allemann, Andrew (2023-03-12). "Indian ISPs block access to major domain registrars". Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  9. ↑ McCarthy, Kieren (July 29, 2019). "Dot-org price-cap scrap latest: Now ICANN accused of snubbing registrars with 'sham' public comment process". The Register . Retrieved October 8, 2019.
  10. ↑ Binder, Matt (August 9, 2019). "How the battle over domain prices could drastically change the web". Mashable . Retrieved October 8, 2019.
  11. ↑ Karanicolas, Michael (September 14, 2019). "What Is the Purpose of ICANN's Comment Periods?" . Retrieved October 8, 2019.
  12. ↑ Bode, Karl (February 28, 2022). "Namecheap Tells Russian Customers to Find Another Registrar Due to Russia's 'War Crimes'". Vice.com . Retrieved February 28, 2022.
  13. ↑ Abigail Opiah (March 2, 2022). "Namecheap offers free web hosting and domain registration to Russian anti-war websites". Tech Radar. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  14. ↑ Murphy, Kevin (March 1, 2022). "Namecheap boss goes nuclear on Russian customers". Domain Incite. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
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