You may have heard the News Last Week that Automattic, the company behind WordPress (and other cool services) has become its own accredited registrar and it got me thinking that it’s been a while since we’ve talked about our own Registrar Service.

We have all different kinds of wholesale, or white label, clients selling domain names through OpenSRS. From the independent web designers, to larger agencies, ISPs and hosting companies and yes, even other registrars.

The part I love the most when I tell our story, is that unlike some other businesses, we don’t have that heart wrenching chapter where the customer outgrows the service provider and waves a sad farewell as they strike out on their own. In fact, far from saying goodbye, we tend to hold our resellers’ hands and walk them through the accreditation process. (We’ve been through it over thirty times ourselves.)

Our Registrar Service is all about bridging the gap as an OpenSRS reseller decides it makes business sense to become its own accredited registrar. It’s a complete replica of the same platform we use to manage more than ten million domain names for more than 10,000 resellers. Plus, you can use a familiar API to register TLDs for which you’re accredited, while still registering domains for other TLDs through us.

See, I think most service providers considering a choice between reselling and accreditation would think about it this way:

  • If I resell, I don’t have to worry about the technology, but I sacrifice some ownership and (inevitably) some branding.
  • If I become an accredited registrar, I get that extra bit of control (and accountability) but I assume a significant technical burden.

There is indeed a significant upfront investment and effort involved in becoming an accredited registrar. But once you decide that investment is worth it, our OpenSRS Registrar Service is sort of like having your cake and eating it too. You get that branding all the way through (to WHOIS records and elsewhere), you get the extra bit of control and accountability, but you still get to offload the really messy technical stuff.

We have tons of information on our website about our Registrar Service, including a case study that explains how we helped Holland’s largest telco KPN, transition from an in-house system, to our Registrar Service for .NL domains.

The most important thing I’d like you to consider is this:

If you’re already selling domain names and interested in becoming an accredited registrar, we can help you through the accreditation and technical certification process in addition to providing one of the best domain name registration and management solutions in the industry. And if you are already a registrar and you’re spending way too much managing systems and processes outside your core competence, we can help you too.