The .PRO Discussion

[InvisionTech]

It seems .PRO is slowly coming out of the cage with cheaper reg prices than they were a year ago and major registrars like netsol taking notice of the extension and promoting it.

Here are some that I picked up in last couple of days:

Alexandria.pro

Anchorage.pro

Arlington.pro

Belfast.pro

Birmingham.pro

Budapest.pro

Durham.pro

Fairfax.pro

Italian.pro

Lisbon.pro

Fire away with your regs after the relaunch on September 8th, 2008.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Live example for @Sedo
Enter BERLIN into your searchbox and try to find my .PRO (2006)

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

.PRO belongs to legacy gTLDs...
It was launched in 2004 after .info/.biz (2001) - so it must be ranked/displayed at least within the same group of gTLDs.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

@Reza
The information above is for your consideration as well.

And live example: https://dan.com/search?&terms=location&length=1-8&order_by=relevance&offset=10
.PRO at the bottom of 2nd page.

 

[DNGear]

My 2 fav extensions have been showing last
Pro
XYZ

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Any changes on GoDaddy Auctions after 15+ years, .PRO is still not supported to be listed there?

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

I just rechecked Advanced Search at https://auctions.godaddy.com
Yes, no any changes, .PRO is absent there...

And looks that even their expired .PROs can't be found...
@Joe Styler So you drop/release them without auctions like gifts, right?

p.s. And I still don't understand: why another Afilias.info TLDs you allow, but only .PRO - disallowed.
Really strange... especially after 15+ years.

 

[DNGear]

.pro and .xyz as well. They are not going to pending deletes/auctions.

 

[Joe Styler]

We do not currently sell .pro on the auctions and have no immediate plans to do so.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

@jmcc
What is your current .PRO stats by registrars, how many domains they have?

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

We do not currently sell .pro on the auctions and have no immediate plans to do so.

Dynadot sells them a few years already in all modes: Marketplace + Expired auctions + Backorder auctions
Just FYI.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

@Dynadot
Payout method is still PayPal only?
If Yes - when wire transfer (SWIFT) will be added?

 

[jmcc]

@jmcc
What is your current .PRO stats by registrars, how many domains they have?

The June 2019 registry report is the latest:
https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/mrr/pro/pro-transactions-201906-en.csv
(330,798 regs).

These are the top 5 countries by registrar from the May 2019 report:

US 37.45 %
Canada 18.42 %
France 11.72%
Russia 7.48%
China 6.69%

The 01 October 2019 zone file count is: 295,408

June 2019 Registrars and totals:
| Tucows Domains Inc. | 56202 |
| NameCheap, Inc. | 54261 |
| GoDaddy.com, LLC | 36050 |
| OVH sas | 27296 |
| Regional Network Information Center, JSC dba RU-CENTER | 24108 |
| Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd. d/b/a HiChina (www.net.cn) | 16689 |
| Name.com, Inc. | 12059 |
| PDR Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com | 9984 |
| Danesco Trading Ltd. | 8427 |
| Gandi SAS | 8056 |
| Dynadot, LLC | 6901 |
| Hosting Ukraine LLC | 6446 |
| Network Solutions, LLC | 5912 |
| Key-Systems GmbH | 5248 |
| EnCirca, Inc. | 4102 |
| GMO Internet, Inc. d/b/a Onamae.com | 3492 |
| 1&1 IONOS SE | 3185 |
| NameSilo, LLC | 2757 |
| Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co., Ltd. | 2427 |
| DomainPeople, Inc. | 2387 |
| Soluciones Corporativas IP, SL | 2285 |
| 101domain GRS Limited | 2078 |
| eNom, LLC | 2021 |
| Internet Domain Service BS Corp | 1496 |
| 1API GmbH | 1431 |
| EPAG Domainservices GmbH | 1309 |
| Hosting Concepts B.V. d/b/a Openprovider | 1132 |
| Mesh Digital Limited | 1121 |
| FBS Inc. | 1081 |
| united-domains AG | 951 |
| Ascio Technologies, Inc. Danmark - Filial af Ascio technologies, Inc. USA | 831 |
| Ligne Web Services SARL dba LWS | 778 |
| Realtime Register B.V. | 754 |
| OnlineNIC, Inc. | 686 |
| Gransy, s.r.o. | 672 |
| MarkMonitor Inc. | 662 |
| EuroDNS S.A. | 651 |
| Uniregistrar Corp | 640 |
| NETIM SARL | 620 |
| Porkbun LLC | 604 |
| PSI-USA, Inc. dba Domain Robot | 568 |
| Register SPA | 567 |
| CSL Computer Service Langenbach GmbH d/b/a joker.com | 554 |
| CSC Corporate Domains, Inc. | 547 |
| Xin Net Technology Corporation | 540 |
| Whois Networks Co., Ltd. | 530 |
| Xiamen ChinaSource Internet Service Co., Ltd | 514 |
| Wild West Domains, LLC | 488 |
| Shanghai Meicheng Technology Information Development Co., Ltd. | 467 |
| Instra Corporation Pty Ltd. | 453 |
| Dreamscape Networks International Pte Ltd | 444 |
| NordNet SA | 442 |
| URL Solutions, Inc. | 430 |
| 10dencehispahard, S.L. | 417 |
| CTS Computers and Telecommunications Systems DBA MAGIC ONLINE | 405 |
| Namebay SAM | 351 |
| Nameshield SAS | 318 |
| Dinahosting s.l. | 298 |
| Online SAS | 295 |
| Regtime Ltd. | 273 |
| Reliable Software | 205 |
| Ledl.net GmbH | 178 |
| Interlink Co., Ltd. | 168 |
| SafeBrands SAS | 166 |
| Jetpack Domains, Inc. | 160 |
| CloudFlare, Inc. | 130 |
| PlanetHoster Inc. | 118 |
| INWX GmbH & Co. KG | 118 |
| Nics Telekomunikasyon A.S. | 118 |
| Register.com, Inc. | 110 |
| Bizcn.com, Inc. | 108 |
| Afilias | 107 |
| Net 4 India Limited | 106 |
| ALIBABA.COM SINGAPORE E-COMMERCE PRIVATE LIMITED | 102 |
| NameWeb BVBA | 102 |
| pair Networks, Inc. d/b/a pair Domains | 96 |
| Marcaria.com International, Inc. | 93 |
| The Registrar Company B.V. | 92 |
| AB Name ISP | 85 |
| Metaregistrar BV | 84 |
| SafeNames Ltd. | 74 |
| Hosteur SARL | 73 |
| Register.ca Inc. | 72 |
| Paragon Internet Group Ltd t/a Paragon Names | 68 |
| http.net Internet GmbH | 66 |
| Nom-iq Ltd. dba COM LAUDE | 64 |
| Domeneshop AS dba domainnameshop.com | 63 |
| Larsen Data ApS | 59 |
| Net-Chinese Co., Ltd. | 57 |
| Epik Inc. | 55 |
| Secura GmbH | 51 |
| HANGANG Systems, Inc. dba Doregi.com | 44 |
| Dynadot10 LLC | 44 |
| GKG.NET, INC. | 41 |
| CPS-Datensysteme GmbH | 40 |
| Dynadot5 LLC | 39 |
| Chengdu Fly-Digital Technology Co., Ltd. | 38 |
| Click Registrar, LLC dba publicdomainregistry.com | 35 |
| CV. Rumahweb Indonesia | 35 |
| Dynadot4 LLC | 34 |
| Ports Group AB | 33 |
| Web Werks India Pvt. Ltd d/b/a ZenRegistry.com | 27 |
| Pheenix, Inc. | 26 |
| Webnames.ca Inc. | 25 |
| Dynadot9 LLC | 25 |
| 007Names, Inc. | 24 |
| Super Registry Ltd | 23 |
| Dynadot15 LLC | 23 |
| Dynadot12 LLC | 22 |
| Innovadeus Pvt. Ltd. | 22 |
| Arcanes Technologies | 21 |
| Dynadot11 LLC | 21 |
| Todaynic.com, Inc. | 21 |
| Variomedia AG | 18 |
| Zhengzhou Century Connect Electronic Technology Development Co., Ltd | 18 |
| Above.com Pty Ltd. | 16 |
| Global Domains International, Inc. DBA DomainCostClub.com | 13 |
| Dynadot7 LLC | 13 |
| Dynadot6 LLC | 13 |
| Dynadot8 LLC | 13 |
| Dynadot3 LLC | 13 |
| Easyspace Limited | 12 |
| Xiamen Nawang Technology Co., Ltd | 11 |
| Dynadot17 LLC | 10 |
| Dynadot14 LLC | 10 |
| Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd. | 9 |
| Dynadot13 LLC | 9 |
| Web4Africa Inc. | 8 |
| Entorno Digital, S.A. | 8 |
| Brandma.co Limited | 8 |
| Zhuimi Inc | 7 |
| Lexsynergy Limited | 7 |
| Own Identity, Inc. | 6 |
| Dynadot16 LLC | 6 |
| Dynadot0 LLC | 5 |
| Global Village GmbH | 5 |
| Domain-It!, Inc. | 5 |
| Beijing Guoxu Network Technology Co., Ltd. | 5 |
| BR domain Inc. dba namegear.co | 4 |
| Alldomains, LLC | 4 |
| Freeparking Domain Registrars, Inc. | 4 |
| French Connexion SARL dba Domaine.fr | 4 |
| Brandsight, Inc. | 4 |
| Dynadot2 LLC | 4 |
| Focus IP, Inc. dba AppDetex | 4 |
| Stichting Registrar of Last Resort Foundation | 3 |
| PSI-Japan, Inc. | 3 |
| Dynadot1 LLC | 2 |
| Nimzo 98, LLC | 2 |
| BB-Online UK Limited | 2 |
| NameCamp Limited | 1 |
| Paknic (Private) Limited | 1 |
| Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers | 1 |
| MAT BAO CORPORATION | 1 |
| COREhub, S.R.L. | 1 |
| Cronon AG | 1 |

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

@Rob Monster
Just FYI... Epik is completely out of .PRO game... just XX domains according to the information above.

 

[Rob Monster]

@Rob Monster
Just FYI... Epik is completely out of .PRO game... just XX domains according to the information above.

If folks want to go big-time with .PRO, just tell @Sufyan Alani and we'll under-cut everyone on .PRO transfers and folks can go to down on .PRO on Epik. Bring us the volume and we'll cut you a deal.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

If folks want to go big-time with .PRO, just tell @Sufyan Alani and we'll under-cut everyone on .PRO transfers and folks can go to down on .PRO on Epik. Bring us the volume and we'll cut you a deal.

OK, thanks.
I will keep in mind regarding transfers.

But you should lower your registration fee definitely... even without our requests...
$2.99 with Dynadot and few times higher at Epik...

 

[Rob Monster]

OK, thanks.
I will keep in mind regarding transfers.

But you should lower your registration fee definitely... even without our requests...
$2.99 with Dynadot and few times higher at Epik...

Will discuss with @Sufyan Alani to find out what promo we are missing but the general theme is to bring volume. Registries like that, and we don't like to waste their time, or ours.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Will discuss with @Sufyan Alani to find out what promo we are missing but the general theme is to bring volume. Registries like that, and we don't like to waste their time, or ours.

This is Afilias.
And their .PROmo (1st year) is a few years old already... availabe for all registrars.

 

[jmcc]

This is Afilias.
And their .PROmo (1st year) is a few years old already... availabe for all registrars.

It is a double edged sword for registrars. The intitial price for the registration might be low, but the renewals on discounted domain names are generally not good. This means that the renewal on discounted registrations will be below 100% (often well below). It might be a better strategy to have country level targeting for offers complete with their own language subpages as well as a discount. Though the US is the largest country in the gTLD, there's a lot of geographical spread. NameCheap does seem to be focused on using discounting to drive volume and it has done it with a lot of the NGTs. Epik competing with NameCheap on discounting might be a race to the bottom.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

It is not only competing with NameCheap...
Currently many registrars are few times cheaper than Epik to reg .PRO
https://tld-list.com/tld/pro

 

[Rob Monster]

It is a double edged sword for registrars. The intitial price for the registration might be low, but the renewals on discounted domain names are generally not good. This means that the renewal on discounted registrations will be below 100% (often well below). It might be a better strategy to have country level targeting for offers complete with their own language subpages as well as a discount. Though the US is the largest country in the gTLD, there's a lot of geographical spread. NameCheap does seem to be focused on using discounting to drive volume and it has done it with a lot of the NGTs. Epik competing with NameCheap on discounting might be a race to the bottom.

Regards...jmcc

We'll focus on value and innovation while being competitive on renewals and transfers. If we get deals on new registrations, we'll pass those savings on to the bulk buyers who want to do some 1st year flips to get the domains into the hands of end-users before renewal day comes up. We did this successfully in July with $0.99 .CO promo that has led to many retail customers buying .CO in our after-market. We would do the same with .COM but we already maxed out our Q4 2019 rebate from Verisign in the first 4 days of October due to some large scale .com buyers.

Our promos are here:

https://www.epik.com/promos/

Just tell @Sufyan Alani if we are missing the boat on some essential promo and we'll work to deploy it swiftly -- all domains still come with our unmatched SSL landers which are great for flipping domains within the first year of registration when buying domains in bulk. Example:

https://laptopcomputers.com/

That topic is discussed extensively elsewhere notably here and here.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

And it is not only about handregs...
With Dynadot API we can catch .PROs for $2.99
This is the main interest of all .PRO domainers here.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

These are the top 5 countries by registrar from the May 2019 report:

US 37.45 %

This is due to Privacy service of Namecheap/Dynadot etc.
It is bound to the USA.

 

[jmcc]

We'll focus on value and innovation while being competitive on renewals and transfers. If we get deals on new registrations, we'll pass those savings on to the bulk buyers who want to do some 1st year flips to get the domains into the hands of end-users before renewal day comes up. We did this successfully in July with $0.99 .CO promo that has led to many retail customers buying .CO in our after-market. We would do the same with .COM but we already maxed out our Q4 2019 rebate from Verisign in the first 4 days of October due to some large scale .com buyers.

Some of the dynamics of the rebates and discounting are scary. (Looking at this from the registrars/hosters/markets side of things.) The public seems to be resisting the golden handcuffs registration offer for $0.99 COM regs with the full fee on the renewal. There also seems to be a consolidation trend with NET being badly hit by the increase and some of the other legacy gTLDs being affected by the trend. Was doing some work on the gTLDs by country over the last few days to see if there were patterns of new regisrations being associated with offers in various countries. US discounts tend to have strong renewals but some other countries tend to have very low renewals. That's why it may be better to target the offers/discounts.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

@namesilo
Just FYI: https://www.namepros.com/threads/the-pro-discussion.522420/page-318#post-7431413
Even 1and1 has more .PRO domains.

 

[jmcc]

This is due to Privacy service of Namecheap/Dynadot etc.
It is bound to the USA.

These are the new registrations for June 2019:
| NameCheap, Inc. | 4847 |
| Tucows Domains Inc. | 1437 |
| Name.com, Inc. | 1067 |
| GoDaddy.com, LLC | 912 |
| Danesco Trading Ltd. | 800 |
| Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd. d/b/a HiChina (www.net.cn) | 539 |
| Dynadot, LLC | 276 |
| Regional Network Information Center, JSC dba RU-CENTER | 257 |
| Hosting Ukraine LLC | 241 |
| PDR Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com | 220 |
| OVH sas | 171 |
| GMO Internet, Inc. d/b/a Onamae.com | 126 |
| Hosting Concepts B.V. d/b/a Openprovider | 121 |
| Key-Systems GmbH | 111 |
| Gandi SAS | 96 |
| 101domain GRS Limited | 71 |
| Internet Domain Service BS Corp | 67 |
| 1&1 IONOS SE | 66 |
| Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co., Ltd. | 60 |
| Soluciones Corporativas IP, SL | 54 |
| Ligne Web Services SARL dba LWS | 52 |
| united-domains AG | 51 |
| Xiamen ChinaSource Internet Service Co., Ltd | 44 |
| Shanghai Meicheng Technology Information Development Co., Ltd. | 37 |
| Network Solutions, LLC | 29 |
| NameSilo, LLC | 28 |
| OnlineNIC, Inc. | 27 |
| eNom, LLC | 27 |
| URL Solutions, Inc. | 26 |
| 1API GmbH | 26 |
| Wild West Domains, LLC | 21 |
| Porkbun LLC | 19 |
| CSC Corporate Domains, Inc. | 17 |
| CSL Computer Service Langenbach GmbH d/b/a joker.com | 16 |
| EPAG Domainservices GmbH | 16 |
| Xin Net Technology Corporation | 14 |
| NETIM SARL | 14 |
| Regtime Ltd. | 13 |
| FBS Inc. | 12 |
| Online SAS | 12 |
| Whois Networks Co., Ltd. | 10 |
| PSI-USA, Inc. dba Domain Robot | 10 |
| Gransy, s.r.o. | 10 |
| Ascio Technologies, Inc. Danmark - Filial af Ascio technologies, Inc. USA | 10 |
| Realtime Register B.V. | 9 |
| Uniregistrar Corp | 9 |
| Mesh Digital Limited | 8 |
| Domeneshop AS dba domainnameshop.com | 8 |
| Reliable Software | 7 |
| Ledl.net GmbH | 6 |
| Dynadot17 LLC | 6 |
| AB Name ISP | 6 |
| MarkMonitor Inc. | 6 |
| Dinahosting s.l. | 5 |
| Register SPA | 5 |
| Dynadot0 LLC | 5 |
| Bizcn.com, Inc. | 5 |
| EuroDNS S.A. | 5 |
| Zhuimi Inc | 4 |
| Innovadeus Pvt. Ltd. | 4 |
| Dynadot2 LLC | 4 |
| Nics Telekomunikasyon A.S. | 4 |
| Instra Corporation Pty Ltd. | 4 |
| pair Networks, Inc. d/b/a pair Domains | 4 |
| 10dencehispahard, S.L. | 4 |
| Web4Africa Inc. | 3 |
| EnCirca, Inc. | 3 |
| INWX GmbH & Co. KG | 2 |
| PlanetHoster Inc. | 2 |
| Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd. | 2 |
| Metaregistrar BV | 2 |
| Todaynic.com, Inc. | 2 |
| Marcaria.com International, Inc. | 2 |
| French Connexion SARL dba Domaine.fr | 2 |
| Dreamscape Networks International Pte Ltd | 2 |
| Paragon Internet Group Ltd t/a Paragon Names | 2 |
| Dynadot1 LLC | 2 |
| ALIBABA.COM SINGAPORE E-COMMERCE PRIVATE LIMITED | 2 |
| The Registrar Company B.V. | 1 |
| Super Registry Ltd | 1 |
| NameWeb BVBA | 1 |
| Net 4 India Limited | 1 |
| PSI-Japan, Inc. | 1 |
| Net-Chinese Co., Ltd. | 1 |
| Nom-iq Ltd. dba COM LAUDE | 1 |
| Nameshield SAS | 1 |
| Dynadot9 LLC | 1 |
| GKG.NET, INC. | 1 |
| http.net Internet GmbH | 1 |
| DomainPeople, Inc. | 1 |
| Namebay SAM | 1 |


Regards...jmcc