Tag Archives: Donuts

Domain Name Registry, ICANN and Governance, New gTLDs

Donuts Poaches ICANN’s 2IC Akram Attallah

Akram Atallah imageAkram Attallah, ICANN’s second in charge and President of the Global Domains Division has resigned, effectively immediately, and will be taking up a position as CEO of Donuts, where his former boss at ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, is a partner. Attallah will be replacing Bruce Jaffe who is stepping down and taking on a role as a senior advisor to the company during the transition. Attallah commences with Donuts on 12 November.

Donuts is the largest new generic top level domain operator by the number of new gTLDs with 238 and second by the number of domains under management (4.1 million). In his 8 years with ICANN Attallah was a key person overseeing the introduction of new gTLDs.

“Akram made many, significant contributions to ICANN in a variety of roles, including as Chief Operating Officer, Interim President & CEO, and as the first President of the Global Domains Division,” said Göran Marby, President & CEO of ICANN in a statement. “Personally, I will miss his advice and his friendship, and I want to thank him for all he did in supporting me when I joined ICANN.”

ICANN will be recruiting a replacement for Attallah, whose last day was 9 October, but in the meantime Marby said he has “asked Cyrus Namazi, VP, DNS Industry Engagement, Global Domains Division, to serve as interim department head for the Global Domains Division, to help ensure a smooth transition. David Conrad, Chief Technology Officer, will provide executive support of the IANA team in the interim.”

“We thank Bruce for his stewardship of Donuts, during which in his tenure as president and chief executive officer, the company raised over $100 million in debt financing to acquire Rightside, and successfully engaged in a process to sell Donuts to Abry Partners,” said Erik Brooks, managing partner at Abry Partners and Donuts board member in a statement. Abry Partners acquired Donuts in September this year and the move could be seen as one of the first major changes Abry is making since its takeover. Attallah and Abry partner Fadi Chehadé, who was ICANN CEO & President prior to Marby, have a history working together, both prior to and at ICANN.

“We are delighted to welcome Akram to Donuts,” Erik continued. “His deep experience in managing global organisations and rapidly-growing technology companies will be essential to driving Donuts’ next phase of growth. We are confident that Akram’s proven track record in and outside the domain name industry will broaden Donuts’ reputation as the innovative industry platform for new top-level domains and will enable the company to pursue rapid growth along multiple pathways.”

“I am thrilled to join the Donuts team,” said Akram Atallah. “I relish the challenge of further expanding overall awareness of the company’s incredible top-level domain (TLD) assets, discovering new ways to use and leverage TLDs, and through its growth and success making Donuts a recognised, global innovation platform for people and organisations to create and manage their digital identities.”

Akram’s diversified technology experience runs the gamut from engineering to operations to product development and marketing. Before ICANN, he was chief operation officer at CoreObjects Software, an engineering services start-up. Prior to CoreObjects, he was general manager of the Broadband Access business unit at Conexant, and before that was the general manager of its Universal Access business, where he grew it to more than $800 million in revenues. His accomplishments at Conexant also included improved profit margins, transforming the marketing and engineering functions, and restoring its global market leadership position.

Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

Donuts Agrees To Takeover By Private Equity Investor

Donuts Inc., the operator of 238 new gTLDs with 4.007 million domain names registered, has announced it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Abry Partners, a leading private equity firm. Terms and timing of the agreement were not disclosed.

The 238 new generic top level domain names in Donuts’ portfolio makes it the largest by far, and which was made even larger when it took over Rightside in 2017. But it has only the second largest number of domain names, behind Domain Name Ventures with 5.336 million, whose largest is .loan with 2.291 million registrations according to nTLDstats. The most popular Donuts new gTLDs are .ltd (473,900 registrations), .live (214,600) and .life (181,700).

Abry Partners was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It’s described as an experienced and successful private equity investment firm focused on media, communications, insurance, business and information services. Since its founding, ABRY has completed more than $77 billion of transactions, representing investments in more than 650 properties. In June this year it was announced it had purchased a controlling stake in Screenvision Media, a cinema advertising and film distribution company based in the United States. In August they announced they had funded the acquistition of AdSwerve, a leading Google Marketing Platform Partner, by Seattle-based Analytics Pros, Inc. – a top Google Analytics 360 and Google Cloud partner and reseller.

ICANN’s former President and CEO, Fadi Chehadé, is a partner at Abry. Chehadé was in charge of ICANN from September 2012 until March 2016. Shortly afterwards Chehadé commenced with Abry as well as being on the advisory board with the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He’s also a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation. Chehadé announced in August 2015, after he had announced his resignation, that he would commence his role with Abry upon leaving ICANN.

According to Bloomberg, Abry “prefers to invest in North America and Europe. The firm typically invests between $25 million and $150 million of equity in case of the private equity fund or between $15 million and $50 million of mezzanine/senior equity capital or between $50 million and $125 million in buyouts of mid market companies. It seeks to invest for a period between three years and seven years.”

“Individuals and businesses manage their digital identities in an increasingly complex world of proliferating devices, platforms and access points,” said Erik Brooks, Managing Partner, Abry Partners. “Donuts is ideally positioned with the world’s largest portfolio of new TLDs, a proven team with deep experience in scaling successful technology companies, and a track record of innovation in their industry. We are excited to partner with Donuts and support their next phase of growth and success.”

This announcement marks another important milestone in a period of exceptional growth and innovation for Donuts. In the last 18 months, Donuts has acquired Rightside, a complementary registry with a high-quality portfolio of 40 new TLDs and a wholly-owned registrar subsidiary, Name.com; it has launched BL.INK, a premier enterprise short link management platform used by leading brands such as Coca Cola, TEN (The Enthusiast Network) and many others, and added features for registrars’ and resellers’ SMB customers; it was named one of the Red Herring 100; it has launched Relevant Name Search (RNS), a powerful new domain search tool for channel partners; it was the first Internet registry to surpass the $500,000 mark in sales of individual new TLD domain names; and it was named Number One in the Deloitte Fast 500.

“We are delighted to partner with Abry,” said Bruce Jaffe, Donuts president and chief executive officer. “Over the last thirty years, the firm has built a stellar track record as one of the premier media, communications, business and information services-focused private equity investment firms in North America. We believe their confidence in Donuts underscores the power and magnitude of our opportunity. Moreover, their insights and expertise in our sector will be of enormous benefit to Donuts as we move forward.”

Domain Name Registrants, New gTLDs

Donuts Explains Premium Domains in Their TLDs

In a recent blog post, Donuts published a “premium insights” into the premium domain names registered in their new gTLDs. Donuts believes the range and scope of this activity offer a window into the overall health of market uptake for new TLDs, so we thought we’d share some highlights on a regular basis.

Every week, they note, there are typically dozens of names sold up to the $1,000 per year mark, and in their highlighted week there were some notable domain names registered including: run.live, dental.claims and news.software. .LIVE continues to be one of Donuts’ top-performing TLDs for premium domains.

Donuts have hundreds of domain names in the $100 to $999 range with the most popular new generic top level domains in this price range currently being: .NEWS, .REVIEWS, .VENTURES, .LIVE, .SERVICES and .BUSINESS. Some examples they give include:

  • king.news, mail.services, rc.ventures, phoenix.business, audit.business, insurance.live

As always, one- and two-character domains are quite popular. Some examples were:

  • z.pizza, jz.live, 7.diamonds, a.vacations, b.international, m.codes, a.camera, bx.finance, ca.tours, i.cheap

Increasingly they note people are registering domain names containing full words that are meaningful and often highly specific. These include:

  • chicago.house, printing.graphics, spice.kitchen, liberty.network, littlerock.university, motorcycle.tours, speaking.coach, videostream.live, approved.credit, autoinsurance.live, boutique.wine, dermatology.surgery

This trend is noteworthy for a couple of reasons say Donuts: first, many of these appear to be the actual business name (e.g., littlerock.university) or a particular category (e.g., boutique.wine, printing.graphics). In the former case, Donuts like the fact that increasingly people are including their brand or business into their domain name; it’s a powerful way to leverage digital identity. In the latter case, category names are especially valuable to registrants for organic search purposes.

Donuts has previously highlighted the ‘evergreen’ SEO nature of these names. Having a name that’s a popular search term (such as motorcycle.tours or dermatology.surgery) means that this name is well positioned to appear on the first page of organic search results. That’s a powerful benefit for businesses looking to acquire customers without having to pay SEO/SEM consultants to maintain their search presence.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry

Donuts Makes It Easier To .TRAVEL

Donuts have relaunched the .travel TLD with a simplification of the registration process making it much easier for registrars to offer the domain for sale, and easier for individuals and businesses to acquire a .travel domain name.

Donuts announced it was taking over the .travel generic top level domain on Valentine’s Day, 14 February, and is expecting big things from the relaunch as global digital travel sales are expected to grow strongly, to surpassing $200 billion by 2019, according to eMarketer. With this strong growth, the exceptionally high quality of registrants in .travel and the strength and complementarity of the Donuts’ existing travel-related TLD portfolio, Donuts has big plans.

Since the acquisition, Donuts has simplified the registration process, enabling registrants to stay on the registrar’s website for the entirety of the registration/checkout process. Donuts believes that this streamlined registration process will increase registrations, as compared to the previous process, which was disjointed and complex for registrants.

“Travel is a thriving category and the .travel TLD is the centerpiece of a high-quality portfolio that includes .cruises, .flights, .rentals, .holiday, .reise, .reisen, .tours, .vacations, .viajes, .voyage and more,” said John Pollard, executive vice president and general manager of Donuts’ registry. “By simplifying the registration process, we’ve expanded the availability and accessibility of .travel.”

The Donuts travel TLD portfolio is ideal for travel agencies and adventure companies, hotels, hostels, bed & breakfast hosts, local resource sites and tourist attractions, travel writers and bloggers, and luggage and other travel-related retailers. TLDs such as .properties and .rentals are resonating with those looking to maximize their offers across multiple vacation rental sites. In fact, earlier in 2018, the domain name www.vacation.rentals was purchased for over $500,000, by an entrepreneur that has launched a competitor site to VRBO and HomeAway.

In their relaunch announcement, Donuts referred to recent research that affirms the growing importance of web links that use real words. In a survey conducted by Sapio Research and commissioned by Donuts, respondents overwhelmingly opted for branded short links using real words, over links containing long strings of characters and / or legacy short links. Reasons for preferring branded short links using real words included: more meaningful information, clarity of content, identification with the brand, trust and greater simplicity. To learn more about this survey, click here.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

Donuts Announces Acquisition of .FAN

Donuts Inc today announced it has re-acquired the .fan new gTLD, making it the 241st TLD in Donuts’ portfolio, with general availability expected in mid-September.

“We are excited to add .fan to our portfolio,” said John Pollard, executive vice president and general manager of the Donuts registry. “Fans literally wear their allegiances on their sleeves, and a .fan domain name will clearly signal a destination for those who passionately support sports teams, musicians, performers, entertainers and causes.”

Donuts currently has 238 new generic top level domains in general availability with 3.958 million domain names under management according to nTLDstats and 4 with more than 100,000 registrations. The largest of these new gTLDs is .ltd with 470,000 registrations followed by .live (189,000), .life (183,000) and .today (105,000). There are also a relatively low number of pending deletes with only 125,000 listed.

In announcing their acquisition, or reacquisition, Donuts explain how fan engagement is a powerful economic driver in sports, e-sports, entertainment, gaming, the arts and other verticals. Social media, new analytics tools and specialized technology are all ways for teams, entertainers, performers, celebrities and their fans to connect. The .fan TLD joins a diverse portfolio of sports and entertainment names that includes: .bike, .football, .bingo, .casino .golf .hockey, .live, .band, soccer, .team, .tennis, .training, .futbol, .dance, .rocks, .events, .movie, .show, .theater, .actor, .dance, and more.

Since .fan is a new release, it will enable registrants to obtain high-quality domain names that have long been unavailable in legacy TLDs, and which are more suitable for search and social media.

In fact, recent research affirms the growing importance of web links that use real words, including new TLDs. In a survey conducted by Sapio Research and commissioned by Donuts, respondents overwhelmingly opted for branded short links using real words, over links containing long strings of characters and / or legacy short links. Reasons for preferring short links using real words included: more meaningful information, clarity of content, identification with the brand, trust and greater simplicity. To learn more about this survey, click here.

The announcement comes less than 2 weeks after Donuts announced they had launched general availability of BL.INK – a new short link solution that uniquely leverages the power of real words – including Donuts’ leading portfolio of 240 new top-level domains – for creating branded and custom short links.

BL.INK is the evolution of BudURL, a best-in-class link management platform that serves top-tier digital marketers in leading companies such as Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Target, and many others in the Fortune 1000.

“TEN: The Enthusiast Network’s Adventure Sports Group has iconic brands such as SURFER, TRANSWORLD SKATEBOARDING, ADVENTURE SPORTS NETWORK, SNOWBOARDER and POWDER MAGAZINE,” said Kris Heineman, director of Audience Development at TEN. “We switched to BL.INK because we needed a link management platform that’s flexible and agile, to meet the very different needs of each of our media brands. BL.INK enables us to elevate our social marketing and connect with our readers via branded short links.”

Donuts acquired BudURL in 2017 and has been working in stealth mode to enhance the product with unique, game-changing features, a new name (that conveys its agility and simplicity), and a robust API that allows distribution as a value-added service (VAS) through Donuts’ extensive registrar and reseller channel of more than 200 partners.

“We use the BL.INK across all our social channels,” said Jared Muscat, social media content producer at Patagonia. “We are able to track metrics with great detail, and with the branded short link, we’re able to maintain our brand standard while doing so.”

Domain Name Registry

Public Interest Registry joins the Internet Watch Foundation

Public Interest Registry has joined the Internet Watch Foundation as a Member, in a move which reinforces its commitment to protecting billions of internet users and the child victims of disturbing sexual abuse images and videos.

As the operator of .org, .ngo and .ong domain names, Public Interest Registry has over 10 million domains under management globally. By joining the IWF, Public Interest Registry is helping to further prevent the spread of child sexual abuse content.

PIR joins other registry operators such as Nominet, Afilias, Donuts (along with Rightside who they took over in 2017), ICM Registry (recently taken over by Minds + Machines), Dot London, webhost and registrar Names.co.uk as well as DNS Filter and Linx – the London Internet Exchange, who are all among the 130 members of the organisation that works internationally to make the internet safer by removing images of child sexual abuse.

Though a small organisation, Public Interest Registry, which is based in Reston, Virginia, operates popular domains that the world counts on to be platforms for the public interest. Its values have been echoed in this important move to join the IWF.

“The IWF represents the companies that are defining how the world tackles online child sexual abuse,” said Susie Hargreaves OBE, IWF CEO.

“With 137 organisations joined up as Members of the IWF, we now have more Members than ever before. These companies include some of the giants of the internet world, through to smaller filtering companies. What unites them, is their commitment to do the right thing.

“We can’t thank Public Interest Registry enough for joining us as a Member. It means that so many more domain names are now protected from child sexual abuse content. In turn, this is protecting billions of users of websites on these domains, as well as the victims themselves.”

“IWF’s global mission to eliminate online child sexual abuse imagery is among the most important work being done on the internet,” said Elizabeth Behsudi, Vice President and General Counsel at Public Interest Registry.

“Public Interest Registry is committed to making the .org domain space a safe and trusted environment for everyone. We are proud to work with the IWF and support the incredibly important services they provide.”

Domain Name Aftermarket, Domain Name Registrants, New gTLDs

Donuts Announce Largest Ever New gTLD Domain Name Sale With $500K+ Sale of Vacation.rentals

Donuts yesterday announced what is believed to be the largest ever sale of a new gTLD domain name with the sale of the “platinum” vacation.rentals for $500,300.

The sale was brokered by Brooke Hernandez, senior domain broker at Uniregistry and the domain name was acquired by Michael and Handan Kugler, long time resort owners and entrepreneurs. The Kuglers, along with Marshall Hart, William Whelpley, ITM Investments, Kalus Enterprises, and Jim and Wendy Sherrill, founded Vacarent, LLC, the parent company of the Vacation.Rentals website.

Donuts is the largest registry by new generic top level domains managed with 238, the largest being .ltd with over 353,000 registrations while .rentals is their 72nd largest with 12,300 according to nTLDstats.com.

Leveraging their experience as resort owners and entrepreneurs in digital commerce, the Kuglers created the Vacation.Rentals website with several objectives. First, they wanted to offer property owners a more responsive online experience from a trusted provider with direct understanding of their needs, and a business model that was based on annual subscriptions – not on bookings transaction fees. Second, they wanted to empower vacationers with the ability to easily find what they need and interact directly with property owners.

“While online rentals are well established, there is a growing unfulfilled need with property owners,” said Michael Kugler, founder and CEO of Vacarent, LLC, the parent company of the Vacation.Rentals website. “We aim to give owners the best online destination for them to easily market their properties. The term “vacation rentals” is THE most frequently searched term online for vacation properties; it’s a name I’ve had my eye on for a while and finally it’s our brand. We’re excited to leverage our name and our website to benefit both property owners and vacationers.”

“The travel and vacations category is huge and growing rapidly,” said Matt Overman, senior vice president of sales, Donuts. “We are delighted that Michael and Handan Kugler and the Vacation.Rentals team are offering an exciting, differentiated solution for property owners and vacationers. Vacation.rentals is a terrific domain name and already has “page one” ranking on popular search engines. We look forward to following the growth of Vacation.Rentals and supporting its success.”

The Vacation.Rentals sale comes on the heels of Donuts’ announcement that is has acquired the .TRAVEL top-level domain.

“This record-breaking sale further supports the rising value and demand for new TLDS,” said Brooke Hernandez, senior domain broker at Uniregistry. “This is only the beginning, and we are excited to be a part of it. Congratulations to Donuts and to the Kuglers!”

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry

Donuts No Longer Just a “New” gTLD Company After Acquiring .TRAVEL

Donuts, with 238 new gTLDs and 3.629 million registrations according to nTLDstats, the largest of any registry by far, has added another gTLD to its portfolio, but this time it’s the legacy gTLD: .travel.

Donuts acquired the .travel generic top level domain from registry operator Tralliance Registry Management Company, who was delegated the gTLD in July 2005. So .travel becomes Donuts’ 239th TLD. However .travel is a bit different to other gTLDs as it’s what’s known as a sponsored gTLD, meaning it represents a particular community. Other sponsored gTLDs are .cat, .asia, .gov, .edu and .museum. There are 15 in total.

Registering a .travel domain name is a little more difficult than usual with registrants needing to acquire a “member number” from the registry and confirming they are or will be a “creator or provider of travel and tourism products, goods, services or content” before going to a registrar to register their domain name. However according to a Domain Incite report, Donuts will look at “tinkering with” the current process to make domains easier to register. It’s also one of the more expensive TLDs with domains costing around $155 from Europe Registry.

There are currently around 17,000 .travel domain name registrations, however they peaked at 220,000 in either late 2008 or early 2009 with registrations falling off a cliff shortly thereafter, presumably as a result of a discounted promotion in a year earlier, according to RegistrarStats. And assuming the 17,000 registrations number is accurate, it would put .travel around the 50th largest of all of Donuts’ gTLDs.

“We are delighted to add .TRAVEL as the ‘anchor tenant’ of our travel-related portfolio,” said Bruce Jaffe, Donuts president and chief executive officer. “The travel market is global, it’s enormous and it’s ideal for our top-level domains. We are seeing businesses of all sizes all around the world building their digital identity around our domains, and .TRAVEL is the perfect complement.”

Today, nearly 40% of the industry is doing business digitally: travellers and the businesses serving them are discovering, planning, advertising and transacting online. According to eMarketer, the global digital travel market will exceed $200 billion by 2020.

Since its launch in 2005, the .TRAVEL domain has been embraced by the travel industry. Domain names ending in .TRAVEL now identify tens of thousands of travel businesses and organizations on the Internet. The .TRAVEL domain is widely recognized as of the highest quality, and is used by leading travel businesses such as: visitloscabos.travel, adventures.travel, hongkongdisneyland.travel, goldman.travel, AARP.travel and tens of thousands of others.

“We believe that adding .TRAVEL to our portfolio will enable us to grow our entire category of domains, by offering compelling choices to travel-related businesses and organisations, and to the many millions of travellers and travel buffs located throughout the world,” Jaffa added. “They’re transacting, they’re blogging, they’re on social platforms, they’re podcasting – they’re everywhere online. We look forward to working with our partners to introduce these high-quality, relevant names to an enormous, global audience.”

Domain Name Aftermarket, New gTLDs

Sedo and Donuts Collaborate to Make Super-Premium Inventory Available

sedo-logoSedo and Donuts have announced that Donuts’ platinum, that is reserved and super-premium, domain name inventory is now featured on the SedoMLS network, billed as the largest domain distribution network powered by Sedo.

With this collaboration, Sedo customers and SedoMLS distribution partners now gain access to previously unavailable platinum inventory from Donuts’ more than 200 new generic top-level domain (gTLD) extensions, such as bitcoin.money, fake.news, credit.repair and clean.energy.

In addition to supporting Donuts Platinum domains within the SedoMLS network, Sedo has also launched support for domains carrying a premium renewal fee. All registrants of domains that carry premium renewals can now list their domains for sale via the SedoMLS network and immediately get widespread distribution, and liquidity, thru their network of registrar partners.

Before launching on the SedoMLS network, some recent Donuts platinum sales via Sedo included:

  • super.market – $25,000
  • black.market – $30,000
  • tv.show – $35,000
  • the.news – $50,000

“We’ve already had great traction with Sedo, which is why we think SedoMLS is an ideal platform for providing buyers access to our platinum inventory of names,” said Matt Overman, senior vice president of sales, Donuts Inc. “Collaboration with Sedo and their huge network of registrar partners means more eyes on these domains, which we hope will drive greater awareness and more sales of our platinum inventory.”

“We’re excited to offer the Donuts platinum inventory and to showcase our support of tiered pricing, which is now available to all participating SedoMLS registrars and our distribution partners. This is a win-win-win for registries, buyers, sellers and domainers alike,” said Tobias Flaitz, chief executive officer, Sedo. “We believe Sedo is the only provider to offer these services and with Donuts being an industry leader in making its inventory more readily available, this paves the path for other registries to come on board in this capacity, too.”

Equally important, via Sedo’s make-offer bidding platform, buyers will now be able to negotiate the domain sales and renewal price. Sedo’s brokers will directly support these negotiations.

Every second domain transaction globally is handled by Sedo. To learn why more than two million customers are benefiting from trading over 19 million listed domains, check out our solutions to learn more or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn as well as in the upcoming Sedo Partner newsletter.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, New gTLDs

Donuts Releases Free Domain Name Search Tool Across Wide Range of TLDs

Donuts has released for public use a search tool to enable potential domain name registrants to search across a wide range of top level domains, not just those managed by Donuts. The tool, Relevant Name Search (RNS), is available for registrars and resellers to incorporate into their websites or to use for free from Donuts.

RNS is the result of extensive beta testing with a number of registrars and is designed to deliver a more complete and satisfying domain name search experience, which in turn can help drive higher end customer engagement and conversion.

The service is not dissimilar to Verisign’s NameStudio that was released last November. NameStudio works to assist potential registrants of .com and .net domain names find their relevant domain. However RNS is offered to registrars and resellers as a tool to assist their customers find better domain names, and across a wide range of TLDs.

Searching for “domainpulse” brings up a range of options, mostly with new generic top level domains, which in part would reflect domain names that are already registered and unavailable. There is also an option for “availability checking”.

One registrar that has been trialling the service for over year commented on the benefits of RNS by improving customer engagement.

“We have been using RNS for over a year, and it’s made a significant difference in the depth of our customer engagement,” said Michael Fountain, eNom. “Having invested heavily to drive traffic to our website, and in domain name diversity, we want to leverage our efforts to engage and convert visitors into customers. RNS helps our visitors find the right domain names quickly, which keeps them engaged and shopping.”

RNS delivers full flexibility and tuning for registrars and resellers, to adapt to their specific marketing and merchandising programs. Key features include:

  • Geotargeting to link promotions to visitors’ geographic locations
  • Search type segmentation to enable registrars to leverage market development funds for specific classes of searches
  • Customisable placements of specific TLDs within the search results suggestions, to support campaigns and promotions
  • Custom search support for key verticals that match customer demographics
  • Improved customer experience within RNS helps end customers cut through the noise, for more targeted, satisfactory search results

“We’re passionate about helping our registrar customers, and RNS is another example of our investments in innovation for their benefit,” said John Pollard, executive vice president and general manager of Donuts registry. “The industry needs an unbiased, configurable and flexible tool that does the best possible job of serving up the best, most relevant names for end customers.”

The Donuts RNS is a free service, readily available to all registrars and resellers looking to enhance their domain search results, and to have greater engagement with their website visitors.

“Domain search should be unbiased and comprehensive,” continued Pollard. “That’s why we are providing RNS free of charge. By encouraging widespread adoption, we can share and optimise search behaviours, to better assist registrars and resellers in their merchandising programs.”