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Industry | Internet |
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Founded | 2012 |
Founder | Frank Schilling |
Headquarters | Governors Square, Unit 3-110 PO Box 1361 Grand Cayman KY1-1108, Cayman Islands |
Number of locations | 2
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Products | § Top-level domains [1] |
Owner | GoDaddy |
Website |
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Uniregistry is a large retail domain name registrar and web services provider; as well as a domain name registry that administers generic top-level domains. In February 2013, the related company Uniregistrar Corporation became an ICANN-accredited registrar and launched under the licensed Uniregistry brand name in 2014. Uniregistry's acquisition by GoDaddy was announced in February 2020. [2] [3]
Uniregistry Corporation was officially founded in 2012 by Frank Schilling, one of the largest private domain name portfolio owners in the world, [4] [5] and was registered in the Cayman Islands. However, the domain Uniregistry.com was registered six years earlier and the company filed an intent to use the name in the Cayman Islands in 2010. Trademark applications for the "Uniregistry" mark and its stylized "U" logo were filed in 2012. [6] That year, Schilling invested $60 million and applied for 54 new top-level domains. [7] [8] [9] Uniregistrar Corporation became an ICANN-accredited registrar in February 2013. In January 2014, Uniregistry Inc. became a subsidiary in Newport Beach, California to house a West Coast service and support team. [10] [11] The registrar began operating under the licensed Uniregistry brand name in 2014. [4] Uniregistry's registry infrastructure was designed by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) [5] and Uniregistry subsequently purchased its infrastructure in 2013.
In February 2014, the company launched its first two top-level domains, .sexy and .tattoo. [12] That same month, Uniregistry reached a private agreement with Donuts whereby Uniregistry would own the extensions .audio and .juegos ("games", in Spanish) and Donuts would own .auction, .furniture, and .gratis. The two companies remain at odds over control of the top-level domain .shopping. [13] Uniregistry won .click, .hosting, and .property in April 2014. [14] [15] The company launched the top-level domains .audio, .hiphop, and .juegos in September 2014. [16] It acquired .flowers for an undisclosed amount that same month, beating out Donuts, Minds + Machines, and 1-800-Flowers. [17] In November 2014, the registrar began accepting the cryptocurrency Topcoin to pay for domain name registrations, inbound transfers, and renewals across its extensions. [18] The company released .click, .diet, .help, .hosting, and .property during the Thanksgiving holiday week in 2014. [19] [20]
Uniregistry acquired .lol in January 2015, [21] .mom in March, [22] [23] and .game in May 2015. [24] Uniregistry launched .photo and .pics in April. [25] In May 2015, the company and XYZ announced their joint operation of Cars Registry Limited, a company that would operate three top-level domains related to the automotive industry: .auto, .car, and .cars. [26] Uniregistry had won .auto and .cars in 2014, [27] while XYZ acquired .car from Google for an undisclosed amount in 2015. [28] [29] The company launched a new version of its registry website in August 2015. [30] In September 2015, Uniregistry agreed to take over management of the extension .hiv and continue fundraising and raising awareness of HIV/AIDS. .hiv became the first open charitable top-level domain in 2014. Schilling has said of the extension:
By assuming the registry operations of .hiv, we are taking our core skills and putting them at the service of one of the most urgent challenges of humankind. The United Nations has reconfirmed the opportunities to end the global AIDS epidemic within our lifetime. At Uniregistry, we want to be a part of this ambitious endeavor. Of course, Uniregistry is a for-profit company. But with .hiv, we act as a social enterprise. It is the social mission that will guide the operation of this special TLD. [31]
Uniregistry has been the lead sponsor for NamesCon, the domain name industry's largest conference, for at least three years. [32]
Uniregistry is the domain name registry for the following generic top-level domains: [33] [34]
More than 17,200 .audio domains have been registered as of September 2014, although 16,000 of these were short domain names registered by Schilling's own North Sound Names (NSN). [66] NSN is a subsidiary of Uniregistry Corporation that sells the premium names in Uniregistry's top-level domains direct to consumers. It also sells the domain names it manages through the Uniregistry Market, which launched on June 16, 2015. The Uniregistry Market EPP extension is available to all Uniregistry-accredited registrars. [67] As of September 24, 2014, more than 10,800 .blackfriday domains were registered, with 400 registered within the first day of general availability. NSN registered 10,000 .blackfriday domains in September 2014, along with 5,000 .hiphop domains. [68] 500 .hiphop domains were registered prior to NSN's large purchase. [69] 400 non-Uniregistry .christmas domains were registered on its first day of general availability. [70] More than 10,000 .click domains were registered on the first day of general availability (outlets initially reported 3,800 registrations, but Schilling confirmed the higher figure). [71] [72] [73] Uniregistry only held back single-character domain names. This strategy differs from the registry's previous launches in which Schilling's company registered thousands of domains. [74]
On April 15, 2014, the number of domains under Uniregistry's management increased by 50,735 after NSN registered large numbers of .gift, .link (19,945), .photo, .pics, .sexy and .tattoo domains. This increase caused the total number of generic top-level domains registered to pass the 500,000 threshold. [75] More than 8,000 .photo and 4,000 .pics domains were registered by July 2014. [25] As of April 2014, the extensions .link, .sexy, and .tattoo have been registered more than 20,000, 12,318, and 5,932 times, respectively, though these figures include Uniregistry's activated reserved domains. [76] As of February 2015, .diet, .help, .hosting, and .property have been registered 14,596, 21,630, 11,609, and 38,464 times, respectively. The extensions were registered 787, 1,908, 1,197, and 1,490 times, respectively, on the first day of general availability; NSN later registered 13,268, 17,988, 9,329, and 35,991 domains, respectively. [72] [77] FTD purchased the domain Pro.flowers for $50,000 in 2015. [78] [79]
In 2015, the registrar surpassed 1.3 million domains under management. [80] [81] Bulk tools offered by the company include: "Domain Tracker" for monitoring domain expiration dates; two-step account verification for enhanced security; cloud storage for organizing domain attachments; and optional integration with DomainNameSales, which allows users to link their DNS and Uniregistry accounts. [80] The company began offering an affiliate program called "Uniregistry Affiliate Plus" in 2014. [82]
The registrar along with Domain Name Sales (DNS) was acquired by GoDaddy in April 2020.
.ie is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) which corresponds with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for Ireland. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) list the Computing Services Computer Centre of University College Dublin as its sponsoring organisation for the .ie domain. Since 2000 the business of administrating the domain registry has been handled by IE Domain Registry Limited. Domain name registration is open to individuals located in, or with a significant connection with, any part of the island of Ireland.
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of every fully qualified domain name. They are called generic for historical reasons; initially, they were contrasted with country-specific TLDs in RFC 920.
The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .io is nominally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory. The domain is operated commercially by Afilias, a domain name registry subsidiary of Ethos Capital.
.ky is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cayman Islands. The code was chosen as other possible options had already been allocated. Registration was limited to residents and registered companies in the Cayman Islands with a local address, but this restriction was removed in September 2015. The Cayman Islands also has the international three-letter code CYM and has won a bid to be awarded the .cym domain in a future expansion of the top-level domain space.
Afilias, Inc. was a US corporation that was the registry operator of the .info, .mobi and .pro top-level domain, service provider for registry operators of .org, .ngo, .lgbt, .asia, .aero, and a provider of domain name registry services for countries around the world, including .MN (Mongolia), .AG, .BM (Bermuda), .BZ (Belize), .AC, .GI (Gibraltar), .IO .ME (Montenegro), .PR, .SC, .SH, .VC, and .AU (Australia). Afilias also provided ancillary support to other domains, including .SG (Singapore), .LA (Laos), and .HN (Honduras). It was merged into Identity Digital in 2022.
Frank T. Schilling is a Canadian and Caymanian Internet-investor.
Name.com is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web hosting company based in Denver, Colorado. The company sells DNS domains, web hosting, email services, SSL certificates, and other website products.
.wiki is a top-level domain name. It was proposed in ICANN's New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and became available to the general public on May 26, 2014. Top Level Design is the domain name registry for the string.
The domain name Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) is a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Dot Chinese Website is among many listed top level domains. Created along with the partner domain name Dot Chinese Online (.在线) by TLD Registry through Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN)’s new gTLD program launched in April 28, 2014. TLD Registry was founded in June 2008 in Finland with the mission to create essential new Chinese TLDs - intended mainly towards a Chinese-speaking audience. Because it is displayed in a simplified Chinese character language specific script, Dot Chinese Website is known as an Internationalized Domain Name (IDNs).
Top Level Design is a company based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, and the domain name registry for the generic top-level domains .wiki, .ink, .design, and .gay. Ray King serves as its chief executive officer.
.club, often stylized as .CLUB and sometimes dot-club, is a top-level domain (TLD). It was proposed in ICANN's new generic top-level domain (gTLD) program, and became available to the general public on May 7, 2014. .Club Domains, LLC is the domain name registry for the string.
.gay is a top-level domain name. It was proposed in ICANN's New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and became available to the general public in September 2020. Top Level Design is the domain name registry for the string.
.design is a generic top-level domain name in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It was proposed in ICANN's new generic top-level domain (gTLD) program, and became available to the general public on May 12, 2015. Top Level Design was the domain name registry for the string until April 2021, when it was transferred to GoDaddy Registry.
Donuts Inc. was a domain name registrar and registry providing paid domain names under 270 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), as made possible by ICANN's gTLD expansion program, as well as 173 other TLDs including .au (ccTLD) and .org, through its own registry status and contracts between its subsidiaries and other registries.
.xyz is a top-level domain name. It was proposed in ICANN's New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and became available to the general public on June 2, 2014. The domain name came about both because the three letters are the last in the Latin-script alphabet, and to refer to people from Generations X, Y, and Z. XYZ.com and CentralNic are the registries for the domain.
.hiv is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) proposed by the Berlin-based nonprofit dotHIV and owned by Uniregistry as of September 2014. It is the first open charitable gTLD and its ICANN designation states that the domain's operator is precluded from making a profit. Funds raised from .hiv domain sales will initially benefit projects to increase access to HIV/AIDS treatment in Rwanda, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States.
.online is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used in the Internet.
.guru is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) owned by Donuts. It was delegated on 6 November 2013.
.sexy is a generic top-level domain owned by Uniregistry. Delegated on 14 November 2013, .sexy was the subject of controversy due to opposition from the government of Saudi Arabia and privacy concerns regarding registering domains.
Identity Digital Inc. is a company with affiliated entities that operate in the domain name industry, including a domain name registrar and registry services provider. The company acquired the registry operator and back-end registry services divisions of Afilias, Inc. in 2020. Both Donuts Inc. and Afilias Inc. were rebranded and brought under the single company brand name Identity Digital in 2022.