Gibraltar-based domain name registrar and webhoster AlpNames appears to be no more. ICANN announced Thursday they were terminating âthe Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) with registrar Alpnames Limited (IANA #1857), effective immediately.â
The issue first came to prominence when Domain Incite reported on 12 March that âAlpNames has been offline for âdaysâ, and rumors have started to circulate that it might not just a technical problem.â
Domain Incite also reported that âAlpNames is believed to have almost 700,000 names under management, double the size it was last June but well below its peak, at the height of its deep-discounting period in 2017, of over three million.â
It appears the discount registrar has been been having issues for several months. Their last Twitter post was in December and last Facebook post was in November.
The RAA was terminated after ICANN determined Alpnames was no longer performing required registrar functions as specified in the agreement. These functions include allowing existing registrants to renew domain name registrations and processing new registrations.
ICANN invoked the De-Accredited Registrar Transition Procedure (pdf – DARTP) to enable the successful transition of the names to an ICANN-accredited registrar and protect registrants. Once the gaining registrar is identified and confirmed, it will be listed on the Bulk Transfers page.
The time required to complete the transfer process varies by the number of registrations with the terminated registrar. ICANN will work to facilitate the transfer of registrations to the gaining registrar as expeditiously as possible. Once the transfer of registrations has been completed, the new registrar will contact registrants with information on how to access and maintain their domain name registrations.
ICANN has a page that all domain name registrants are encouraged to visit for important information about managing their domain names. However the information is generic in nature and not specific to Alpnames.