Register.com, Inc. - Domain Name Registration - Category Directory

575 Eighth Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, New York 10018
(212) 798-9100

www.register.com

Sales

$104 million

Business Description

We are a provider of global domain name registration, website, email and other Internet services for businesses and consumers that wish to have a unique address and branded identity on the Internet. Domain names serve as addresses and identities on the World Wide Web. They enable a business or person to establish an Internet presence and are integral to the use of websites (e.g., www.register.com), email (e.g., johndoe@register.com) and other types of Internet-based services

We began processing domain name registrations in the generic top level domains (gTLDs) .com, .net and .org in June 1999 and, as such, were the first registrar accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to compete in the domain name registration market after ICANN introduced competition in the industry. We had approximately 3.1 million active domain name registrations under management as of December 31, 2003, representing approximately 1 million customers. Currently, we register, renew and transfer domain names in gTLDs such as .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info and .name and in over 400 country code top level domains (ccTLDs), including .de for Germany and .jp for Japan and sub domains, such as .co.uk and .org.uk for the United Kingdom.

We believe that we offer a quick and user-friendly domain name registration process as well as responsive and reliable customer support. We also assist our customers in further developing and maintaining their Internet presence by offering them a range of website, email and other value-added products and services.

Domain name registration activity is driven by the use of the Internet by businesses and consumers for electronic commerce and communication, the promotion, marketing and protection of brands and identities across the world and other online activities. Our mission is to become the preferred provider of domain names, website, email and other Internet services for customers seeking to build, manage and promote their online presence.
Our Retail division focuses on small to medium-sized businesses and individuals. Generally, these customers purchase domain name registration services and other value-added services directly from our website located at www.register.com. In addition to our Retail division, we maintain a Corporate Services division. Our Corporate Services division provides domain name registration and related products and services, including global registration and management services and online brand and trademark protection, to large corporate enterprises with specialized registration needs. In order to extend the distribution reach of our products and services, we also maintain a Global Partner Network  (GPN) wholesale division which works with companies that resell our domain name registration and web services to their customers using software solutions that we provide. Our GPN partners are typically Internet Service Providers (ISPs), web-hosting companies, telecom carriers and web portals, but also include online and offline retailers and business aggregators. Using software solutions that we provide, these companies resell our domain name registration services and related products and services to their customers.

Products and Services

We are committed to offering new "best of breed" products and services in order to empower our customers to establish their Internet presence and to drive their success. We offer the following key products and services:
Domain Name Registration Services. Our core expertise is in providing domain name registration and management services. We register, renew and transfer domain names in the .com, .net and .org gTLDs, register and renew domain names in the .biz, .info and .name gTLDs and register and renew domain names in hundreds of ccTLDs, of which more than 30 may currently be registered through our www.register.com website. We generally offer one year through ten year registration periods for the initial domain name registration and one to nine year terms for renewals. In connection with domain name registrations, we provide the following basic products and services, for no additional fee:

• FirstStepSite®. We provide our customers who have registered domain names through www.register.com the ability to create a basic website and post it on the Internet. Customers can select from a limited number of layouts, themes and colors and also upload images to customize their FirstStepSites. This no-additional-fee service adds a small navigation bar, on which we display Register.com or third-party advertising, in a frame at the top of the website's screen.

• Website Forwarding — Basic. We allow customers to forward any domain name registered to them to any website page they choose. This no-additional-fee service adds a small navigation bar, on which we display Register.com or third-party advertising, in a frame at the bottom of the website's screen.

• Domain Manager™. This online application enables our customers to view and modify important account information online, on a real-time basis, including their email address, the location of the server that hosts their website and all billing information. It also enables customers to renew their domain name registrations quickly and efficiently on line. On a more technical level, Domain Manager allows our customers to modify certain information about their domain names such as zone file addresses through password-protected online account access.

• DNS Services. We are one of the largest authoritative Domain Name Server (DNS) providers in the world. DNS provides the Internet and Internet users with authoritative routing information for domain names.
Renewal Services. Encouraging our customers to renew their domain name registrations with us is of great importance, as their renewals will allow us to increase our profitability by lowering our overall marketing costs. We are committed to making our renewal services more efficient and easier to use. In order to strengthen our renewal efforts, and to help our customers protect their domain name registrations from inadvertent lapse and deletion, we have developed retention-based initiatives and provide services such as:

• QuickRenew™ — an easy-to-use, one-step online renewal process;

• SafeRenew™ — our automatic renewal service whereby customers who provide a credit card authorization at the time of registration or at any time thereafter, will automatically have their domain names and value-added services renewed as they expire;

• Renewal Manager™ — an easy way for our customers to renew multiple domain name registrations at one time; and

• Outbound email and telemarketing efforts to current customers reminding them to protect and renew their names that are about to lapse.
Domain Name Registrant and Registrar Transfers. We facilitate the processing of domain name registration transfers between registrants. Also, we enable customers to transfer to us, as registrar, domain names in certain gTLDs that they originally registered with a different registrar.
Website and Email Value-Added Services. Promoting usage of domain names is important to increasing our renewal rate and our revenue per customer. To achieve this, we offer value-added products and services, some of which we provide directly and some of which are provided by third parties contracted by us. We also provide renewal services for our products and services. These products and services include:

• Personalized Branded Email. We offer email services that enable our customers to use their unique domain names to create branded email addresses, such as myname@mybrand.com. Our basic email offering allows our customers to access their email via a web-based interface or to have direct and automatic email delivery.

• Hosted Microsoft® Exchange. We offer this service which enables our small business customers to benefit from most of the functions of Microsoft Outlook Exchange (including shared address books and calendars) without the cost of maintaining an Exchange server.

• WebSiteNOW!™. Our template-based do-it-yourself website building tool allows users with no HTML programming skills to create websites that contain images, text and hyperlinks.
 
Our WebSiteNOW! product has more storage space, higher-quality templates, and is more flexible in design capabilities than our basic FirstStepSite product.

• Web Hosting. All of our web hosting products allow users to put websites online using either the included do-it-yourself website building tool or by uploading existing files to the web hosting account directly using an FTP client software, which allows for the transfer of files between a user and a remote server, or through a third party site-building tool like Microsoft Frontpage®. Our advanced web hosting accounts also include ecommerce software that can be used to create an online store.

• Website design services. We offer professional design services through an advertiser that can help our customers build customized websites.

• Website Forwarding — Premium. Our premium domain name forwarding service allows customers to point their domain names to existing sites on the Internet without advertising appearing on the screen and masking the navigation bar of the target landing website.

• Website promotion. We offer services facilitating the submission of our customers' domain names and keywords to various search engines. This helps our customers promote their websites.

• Digital Certificates. We offer digital certificates to our customers to provide a security key for their services which facilitates conducting e-commerce with confidence.
Additional Products and Service Offerings through our Advertisers. In addition, we pursue advertisers who we believe can offer additional products and services that will appeal to our customers and in most cases enable them to further develop their businesses. Examples of these advertisers and services include: incorporation services; search engine advertising; and virtual intranet applications for the small office and home office market.
Corporate Services. Through our Corporate Services division, we offer an array of products and services to assist our global and brand-intensive customers with high volume domain name registration and management and online brand protection needs including:

• Multiple Domain Registrations and Transfers. We enable our Corporate Services customers to register and transfer large numbers of domain names in both the gTLD and ccTLD name spaces. For those customers who consolidate their domain names under our management, we can administer the renewal process with greater ease.

• NameConsole™. We provide a web-based application which allows Corporate Service customers to provide their employees with managed registration capability, including bulk registration of gTLDs and ccTLDs, online responding capabilities and user permission levels through a customized password-protected interface.

• Internet Audit. We assist our Corporate Services customers in identifying how their intellectual property is represented on the Internet, helping them to identify domain names and web pages that contain references to their marks and brands.

• NameWatch™. Using this service, our Corporate Services customers can monitor for newly registered domain names that they believe are confusingly similar or otherwise potentially infringing of their trademark rights.

• Brand Patrol™. This service helps our Corporate Services customers to monitor non-domain name related potential online intellectual property infringement, including unauthorized retailing and metatag infringement.

• Account Masking. We enable Corporate Services customers to register domain names with anonymity (by registering them in Register.com's name) so that they can confidentially secure a name for a product, service or idea before it comes to market.

• Domain LockDown®. We offer domain name security services that "lock" names at the registry level, which significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized alterations to key registrar information.

• Premium DNS. We offer different levels of DNS services, but all domain names of Corporate Services customers subscribing to our Premium DNS service are hosted on Register.com's Premium DNS infrastructure, providing geographic and network redundancies.
 

Domain Name Registration System

The Internet domain name registration system consists of two principal functions: registry and registrar. A registry maintains a master database of domain names, and their corresponding Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, registered in a particular top level domain, such as .com, .us or .uk. A registrar, such as Register.com, acts as an intermediary between the registry and the businesses and consumers, referred to as registrants, seeking to register domain names. Registrars typically handle billing, customer service and the technical management of a domain name registration. As of March 1, 2004, there were 191 registrars accredited by ICANN to accept registration in one or more of the gTLDs, although not all of these accredited registrars are operational. In addition, there are many resellers that are not ICANN accredited registrars, but compete in the marketplace as a reseller of domain name registrations.
The domain name system is organized according to industry nomenclature by levels, so that, for example, in the domain name mybrand.com, .com is the top level domain and mybrand is the second level domain. Top level domains are classified as either gTLDs or ccTLDs. Each ccTLD is affiliated with a specific country, whereas gTLDs are not. Although the original and most common gTLDs continue to be .com, .net and .org, in November 2000, ICANN approved seven additional gTLD registries: .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .museum, .coop and .aero.
There are currently more than 400 different ccTLDs, such as .de for Germany and .jp for Japan or sub domains, such as .co.uk and .org.uk for the United Kingdom, representing more than 200 countries and territories. Each registry for a ccTLD is responsible for maintaining and operating its own database of registered domain names. Some ccTLDs are unrestricted and allow anyone, from anywhere, to register their domain names on a first-come, first-served basis. Others require that registrants have a local presence in the country and may have other requirements and restrictions as well. Several high profile ccTLDs that have recently relaxed previous restrictions include .us (United States) and .cn (China). While there have been movements by ICANN directed at creating uniform domain name registration rules and registrar administration guidelines, to date there has been no international consensus.

From January 1993 until April 1999, Network Solutions, Inc. was the sole entity authorized by the U.S. government to act as both registrar and registry for domain names in the .com, .net and .org top level domains. In November 1998, ICANN was selected by the U.S. Department of Commerce to oversee the management of the .com, .net and .org domains. In April 1999, as a preliminary step to introducing competition into the domain name registration system for .com, .net and .org domains, ICANN selected Register.com as one of five registrars to participate in a testbed to evaluate whether the registration system could accommodate multiple registrars. In June 1999, we were the first of these five competitive registrars to launch our registration services. In November 1999, the testbed was completed, and all registrars meeting ICANN's standards for accreditation were permitted to register domain names in the .com, .net and .org domains.