Skip to main content
close eyebrow

About Us

Democratizing domain registration

Tucows OpenSRS was the first wholesale registrar. Today, we’re also the largest.

Empowering thousands of resellers worldwide

For over 20 years, we’ve made it easy for hosting companies, site builders, e-commerce platforms and digital agencies of all sizes to offer their customers domains, email and SSL.

Four principles guide everything we do.

Protect

We believe the Open Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever known. We protect it actively and thoughtfully.

Serve

We are a service leader. Our customers’ success is our success. Not because it sounds nice but because it’s fundamentally true.

Foster

We help our customers build and grow. We share their success stories. We’re proud of the things people create using our platform.

Build

We help our customers create their success by building intuitive and powerful software that simplifies buying, selling and managing domain names and related services.

Making it easier to get online since 1999

tucows offices tucows offices
 

Making it easier to get online since 1999

Registering a domain used to be a headache. It was expensive, complicated and not at all reseller friendly. The process was ruled by a government-sanctioned monopoly. When the industry was deregulated in 1999, Tucows saw an opportunity to democratize domain registration and OpenSRS was born.

Since then, we’ve branched out. We acquired Enom and Ascio to strengthen our portfolio.

All these brands come together as Tucows Domains Services. While our company evolves, our core mission always stays the same: We exist to simplify domain lifecycle management.

History of Tucows

Tucows begins

1993

 

“The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software” (Tucows), launched as a downloads site founded on a library computer in Flint, MI.

1996

 

Tucows was bought by Internet Direct.

Tucows enters the domains space

1999

 

ICANN ends Network Solutions’ monopoly on domain registrations

Tucows announced our entrance into the domain registrar space and came home from ISPCon ‘99 with hundreds of signed contracts.

January

2000

 

OpenSRS goes live.

We called our more accessible platform the Open Shared Registration System, or OpenSRS for short.

Tucows expands its presence and offerings

2002

 

Merger with Infonautics, Inc.

After the merger, our company name was changed to Tucows Inc.

2003

 

Email and Managed DNS

Email service and DNS—both still core parts of our portfolio—were launched.

2011

 

Epag acquisition

Welcoming Epag helped us provide a broader range of TLDs to our resellers.

2016

 

Tucows acquires Melbourne IT’s wholesale channel

We welcomed hundreds of new resellers and 1.6 million domains to the OpenSRS platform.

2017

 

Enom acquisition

This addition made us the second-largest domain name registrar and largest wholesale registrar in the world.

2019

 

Ascio acquisition

Welcoming Denmark-based Ascio into the family helped us strengthen our global presence.

2021

 

Tucows acquires UNR’s registry platform

With this addition, we expanded our technical team and entered the registry space as “Tucows Registry.”

Today

 

Largest wholesale domain registrar

At 17+ million domains on OpenSRS alone, we continue expanding our solutions and supporting our resellers.