Gandi Bar - Tag - Domain names

The history of prices for Domain Names, updated

Thomas — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:05:00 -0700

Like a bad dream that keeps coming back, once again the old registries leverage their position and take advantage of what ICANN allows: A unilateral price increase for Domain Name registrations.

Like a bad dream that keeps coming back, once again the old registries leverage their position and take advantage of what ICANN allows: A unilateral price increase for Domain Name registrations.

This time we are getting off easy. Only 5 extensions are going up: .ORG, .NET, .BIZ, .INFO and .NAME. The price increase is different for each one, and ranges from $0.51 to $0.78 (you can find more information at the end of this article).

The reason this is possible is that the registries are in a dominant position, in that they control the extensions. Add to this the indulgence of the ICANN (the master of domain names), and the prices creep higher each year. As you may know, at Gandi we have absorbed most of those increases in the past, even though we were increasing our quality of service, adding extensions, and hiring more highly-qualified support agents. As was the case last year, it is once again impossible for us not to pass along these prices increases. With the number of domains we handle, these few cents make up a lot of our operational budget.

Nevertheless, there is some good news. The .COM extension, which was set to increase by 10%, was blocked by the US government. The increase was seen as abusive of a dominant market position.

When will the price increases stop? Sadly, we don't know if they ever will… However, with the arrival next year of around 1500 new general extensions, with around two thirds of these for public registration, it seems that the sale of domain names will undergo a small revolution. Buying-habits will have to evolve. If you forgo the old extensions and chose the new ones, or those that don't increase in price, maybe the registries will have to think twice before requesting increases in the future. You have the power, use it properly!

Here is the list of planned increases this year, by date:
1 July 2013:
- The .ORG will go up by $0.55 (€ 0.43), for price level A, to $16.05 instead of $15.50 today
- The. NET will go up by $ 0.51 (€ 0.40), for price level A, to $16.01 instead of $15.50 today

1 August 2013:
- The .NAME will go up by $0.60 (€ 0.47), for price level A, to $15.60 instead of $15.00 today

1 September 2013:
- The .BIZ will go up by $0.78 (€ 0.60), for price level A, to $16.28 instead of $15.50 today
- The .INFO will go up by $0.74 (€ 0.57), for price level A, to $15.74 instead of $15.00 today

Obviously, renewals are also affected, and are subject to the same increases (though for some extensions, the renewal price is different from the creation price).

Good luck ICANN: The GTLD submissions lists

Thomas — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:37:00 -0700

ICANN Released the gTLD submissions list. It's going to be fun figuring out winners and losers, but the list reveals a popularity contest.

As many of you loyal readers of this blog know, ICANN has been cooking up something new for a while now. Today, June 13th, they released the list of new gTLD strings and the applicants for those strings.

This is really a list of the prizes and the contestants for those prizes, since only 1000 of the 1,930 strings applied for will actually be released next year, and many of the more interesting TLDs have more than one applicant. The applicants chosen will get to manage all domains under the given extension, and registrars like Gandi will contract with them to offer domains with these extensions to our customers, if the holders are willing to sell.
Being a statistician by training, I'm drawn to lists like this. They look like datasets to me, so I'll take the opportunity to run some numbers on it.

There are a lot of rather boring sorts of "trademark" TLDs in the list. These are applied for by one applicant to protect their brand, like everyone who went to business school is always saying you need to do. Interesting that they decided to set up essentially as registries to do so, since you would think they might want to wait and just buy all the important domains with that TLD when the registry winner is picked. Apple Computer (the lone applicant for .APPLE) presumably ran the numbers and decided it was worth it to control everything .APPLE. Google is also a big bidder for its brand TLDs, via its management entity, Charleston Road Registry Inc.
There are also a lot of one-applicant strings that are being gone after by registries that appear to be set up just for this chance, or existing registries looking to expand, like Verisign.
Sometimes it's not clear (from the list, anyway) just who is really applying, but the email address may give you a hint. Charleston Road Registry Inc., for instance, has all google.com addresses, and the fact that they are managing this application for Google is being widely reported.

There are 1,179 of these one-applicant TLDs. That's great, but let's filter these out. The TLDs where there are two or more applicants are where it gets interesting, since this is where ICANN has to pick winners and losers.
Remember, these were not cheap (application fees were $185,000, with actual costs estimated at up to a million).

So how many TLDs had 2 applications? 115.

It looks like there are going to be some interesting conflicts for ICANN to sort out among these 2-applicant competitions, and not just among the Latin alphabet-based TLDs. For example:

Beijing Tele-info Network Technology Co., Ltd. vs. Afilias Limited, over 信息 (meaning "info" or "message") should be interesting. Or how about Guardian News and Media Limited vs The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, over .GUARDIAN?
Who has the moral right to the TLD there?

More numbers, since they tell a story. 3 applicants? There are 50 of these TLDs, and at this level they get more recognizable, like .HOT, .LIFE, .BROADWAY, or even .HOSTING. Still, some oddballs pop out to me. .YOGA? Really? .MERCK? You would think that one would have only one applicant...

4 Applicants: Now big interests are clearly playing the game; only 20 TLDs, and .LLP, .HEALTH, .SOCCER, and .VIDEO are in contention.

5 applicants, and the number drops to single digits: 8 TLDs, and these clearly are hot tickets, with short and sweet .BUY, popular (or sure to be so) .FREE and .GAME, or .SALE.

6 applicants are going for each of 9 TLDs, including the predictable .CORP, .GMBH, and .LAW.

7 applicants each want 8 TLDS, including .WEB, .CLOUD, and .LOVE (.SEX has only 2 applicants).

8 people want each of .DESIGN, .MOVIE, and .MUSIC, 9 want each of .BLOG, .BOOK, .LLC, and .SHOP.
10 want .ART, 11 want .HOME, and .INC, and the most popular at 13 applicants is:
.APP

I would not want to be working at ICANN this year. Disputes will be settled along disclosed rules and guidelines, but some may come down to auctions. One hopes the process of selecting winners will at least be transparent, with influence and conflicts of interest disclosed, or ICANN may find itself in a pool of hot litigative soup, with contention sauce.

И лове РФ

Thomas — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:59:00 -0700

So, I've stumped you, right? Rest assured, I haven't been replaced by Olga the masseuse over vacation. It's just a quick introduction to the first TLD extension available at Gandi in IDN format, .RF (Russian Federation).

To find out what the title of this post means, read on.

For starters, what's an IDN?

This is a good place to start. IDN, which stands for Internationalized Domain Name, designates a domain name containing "language-native" characters (in other words, non-ASCII). The ASCII character table basically consists of all non-accented Latin characters used in English (yes, ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange). In order to "regionalize" domain names, more and more registries have established the ability to create domain names containing nonstandard characters, or IDNs.

This makes it possible to purchase "bébé.com," for example, which is distinct from bebe.com (the two domain names can have entirely different owners).

How does it work?

It works in the same way as any other domain name, with one slight exception: accommodations are made for web tools that weren't designed to display non-ASCII characters. Not to worry; these tools catch up quickly. Today, virtually any user with an up-to-date browser can already enter a domain name with accented characters and the website will appear normally.

For example, if I visit the website www.île.com in Chrome, I'll see http://www.île.com/ in my address bar, as opposed to my out-of-date version of Firefox (3.6), which still displays http://www.xn--le-pja.com/.

This isn't a display error, and it is indeed the same website, but in the latter case, the older browser displays the accented form in an ASCII format called Punycode. This is easily identifiable thanks to the "xn--" preceding the other letters.

So what's the point?

First and foremost: localization. Effectively, words can mean entirely different things depending on the accents used. For example, the site manana.com will certainly yield different content than mañana.com, yet without IDN there can only be one site with that name (It's also worth noting that Google knows the difference between the two searches.). This is a great opportunity to stake out a domain name that's perfectly suited to the meaning and language you have in mind.

Gandi already has over 50 extensions that support IDNs, including .com, .net, .eu, .de, and .es.

And while we're on the subject of extensions that support IDN, you should know that .fr IDNs will be available on July 3, 2012. There will be a two-month sunrise period where it will be possible to register IDN versions of domain names for those who already own the ASCII version.

For example, the lucky owner of the domain name cafe.fr will be first in line to register café.fr. And since the .FR rule also applies to the other AFNIC extensions (.re, .yt, .pm, .tf and .pm), they will all be IDN-ready on the same date. And don't forget that the recent opening of these extensions to Europe means that 30 new characters ( https://www.afnic.fr/en/products-and-services/idns.html ) can now be used.

Slight clarification:

Since AFNIC uses a unique identifier to identify the domain owner, the IDN version of your domain will have to be obtained through the same registrar as that where the ASCII version is registered. Finally, priority rights are only valid on the domain as a whole, i.e. the owner of cafe.fr will have priority over café.fr but not café.re!

So what about .РФ?

Still on the subject of IDNs, the extension .РФ (which translates to .rf, for Russian Federation) is a special case because here, it's the extension itself that is "IDN-ified." It's not the first IDN domain: Egypt (.مصر), Saudi Arabia (.امارات ) and the United Arab Emirates (.السعودية ) secured their respective national IDN extensions on May 5, 2010. However, the .РФ is the first in Cyrillic and the first offered by Gandi. Interest in the French community will be fairly limited, since the .fr extension doesn't accept Cyrillic characters (choose Russian as your language at checkout), but we know that some customers at Gandi will be interested in the novelty of creating a domain with cyrillic characters.

As for the title of this post, it simply means "I love .RF."

Register a .РФ?

If you want to convert a Latin text into Cyrillic, try this link.

Launching of .TEL - Full opening on March 24th at 4 PM (Paris time)

Arti — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:48:00 +0100

After the Sunrise and Landrush phases (underway until March 23rd), .TEL domains will finally be available to everyone as of March 24th.

Online pre-reservation for this final phase is available at Gandi. Registration will be made on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration requests that failed will be fully refunded. The price for a .TEL domain has been set at 14 euros per year excl. VAT under A rates.

As a reminder, please do not forget that the .TEL extension is unlike other extensions! You will be unable to have a website with an address like example.tel. The purpose of the extension is to store and manage your personal contact information in a format that can be easily handled and accessed by everyone or specific persons via DNS records.

We invite you to discover all of the possibilities that are available to you on the registry's website at http://telnic.org/

In any case, I invite you to read our contract.

Please feel free to contact our customer service department if you have any questions concerning the registration process.
Click here to search for a .TEL

One domain name, one certificate

Ryan — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:54:00 +0100

Since trust is the basis of all relationships, and since Gandi has been working each and every day for nearly ten years to earn yours, we have the pleasure of announcing a new and important step: as of today, Gandi is a Certification Authority.

The principle is simple: you visit a website, and in the address bar of your web browser, you see a little padlock or a green color (or colour ) that means, "go ahead, you are on a secure website".

Gandi, true to its core value of "Internet For All", wants to provide this technology to as many people as possible so that they can establish a real and secure online presence. As part of this mission, Gandi will now include a 1 year certificate for free, with each domain name that is registered, transferred or renewed at Gandi.

When you confide your company name, your trademark, your shop, your domain names to us to manage, trust is hugely important.

It is also important when you extend that trust to a company that hosts your resources, a company that allows you to be online and to own a little piece of the web.

Visitors to your site will have that same need for trust and security when they decide to visit your website, whether to order products, services, or just to contact you.

For these everyday choices internet certificates are there to reassure your customers, and to guide them towards those sites that have chosen to have a more "professional" presence.

Gandi, by the quality of its services and products, is a world-renowned domain name registrar and web host that benefits from a capital of confidence that many envy. It was therefore logical (and requested by many of our customers) that we provide these internet certificates.

For those that would like to go further, an entire range of services will be made available on our website www.gandi.net, to meet the needs of our varying customers: individuals, SME, corporate customers, institutions, or resellers, everyone may find a plan that will meet their specific needs.

Have a look at our full offer at http://www.gandi.net/ssl

8 Things a Domain Thief Loves

Joe — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:19:00 +0000

We all put a lot of effort into securing the domain names we purchase. It may be creative energy finding the perfect name for your blog in an increasingly crowded landscape; or waiting patiently for your company name to be released back into the wild by someone who's owned it for 5 years but never used it.

Regardless, your domains can be stolen or sniped from right under your nose. We thought we'd take a light hearted look at how to keep your domains safe from potential domain thieves:

1. Unlocked Domain Names

The thief does not like a locked domain name, it means they have to go through another layer of protection to steal it. Lock all your domains by default.

Do you realise how easy it is for a thief to crack your free email compared to pop3. C'mon now, get serious.

Solution: Lock all your domains by default.

2. Domain name front running (also called domain sniffing)

Just because that domain you searched for three months ago is now with someone using it to promote a Nigerian Strip Poker site, does not mean that it was sniffed and then stolen. However, enough evidence does exist to suggest the practice does exist.

http://www.gandibar.net/post/2008/10/22/Why-domain-name-services-are-not-all-equal

What more can a domain thief hope for than to know the domain name you want.

Solution: search for your name on reputable domain registrar's site (not to blow our own trumpet but you won't catch anyone 'sniffing' here)

3. Weak Passwords

You may think that having a password like "123abc" is an ironic way to fool password crackers, but you wont be laughing when your domain name is used to promote a One Legged Albanian Car wash service.

Solution, make it long and hard. the password that is.

4. Non Variant password implementation

Yes I know it's easier to have the same password for every online account you own. Not wise, if you lose one, you lose them all. Think about that for a minute.

Solution: Keep a hard copy of your accounts and respective passwords handy.

5. Shady, Not to be Trusted Domain registrars

I'm not naming names here, but there are some places you should not be registering your domain. Your neighbourhood domain name thief knows the weak registrars. When you're a vulture you hang where the meat is.

Solution: Read up on the registrar, make sure they have a good rep.

6. Industrial Password Cracking software

If you have a free email service, or you are with a registrar whose security is weak, then the domain name thief will be bringing out his favourite password cracking software.

Solution: Chose a long password and include non dictionary letters.

7. Downloads of Dodgy Software

If you want to spend hours downloading all six series of T. J. Hooker using Bit Torrent I'm not going to judge you, even though Shatner will be losing the royalties. But, are you really sure that download isn't letting some hairy-assed keylogging software onto your pristine machine.

Once the domain thief has a keylogger installed he can open a can of rampant destruction on your security and as you say goodbye to that domain name at least Shatner can comfort you.

8. Naive people who cannot spot a Phishing scam

I've never met someone who has had their details phished, but who would admit it? If your registrar has sent you an email to confirm personal details or to confirm your password, it is most probably a phishing exercise.

If in doubt, email or call the registrar.

So there you have it. It's impossible to guarantee 100% security, but if you make it so hard that even the hardened domain thief cannot work up the enthusiasm, it's job done.

Dodgy domain practices, the story contines...

Joe — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:49:00 +0000

Follow our recent article "Why domain name services are not all equal" we thought we'd keep you up-to-date on some other industry articles along the same lines. Techcrunch has published this great summary about top registrars using "domain warehousing" to profit from their customers expired domains. The article cites an original article by Andrew Allemann at Domain Name Wire who gathered the information. Interesting stuff.

UK government theatens domain name industry, 'Get your house in order or we'll step in and take over'!

Wendy — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:45:00 +0000

This was my first Nominet conference and to be honest I thought it would be quite a dry, corporate affair however I was in for a surprise!

Much like the Internet as a whole, governance of TLD's (top level domains) and ccTLD's(country specific) has grown organically and varies from country to country. To-date the UK and the US governments have taken a non-interventionist approach to governance. The US have taken a totally freemarket approach and gave the right to manage .com to Verisign who run the registry as a profitable and commercial business. Nominet run the .UK registry theoretically as a not for profit business however the fact they made £25 million profit this year has raised questions among it's membership and the government.

We walked into the conference unaware that Nominet was under scrutiny by the government induced by board member in fighting, accusations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest. More controversially BERR (government Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) has serious concerns that Nominet are not looking after the interests of the wider group of stakeholders in the domain industry specifically businesses and the general public in addition to it's existing responsibility to the registrar members.

David Hendon, director of business relations at BERR said 'Nominet and the domain industry need to take more heed of the government agenda on phishing, spam and "bad content". He read out a statement at the conference which to paraphrase sent the message, 'Nominet and it's membership need to get their house in order and self regulate to the government's satisfaction or it would strongly intervene'.

I asked David 'You've effectively made a threat telling us to get our house in order, we need to fill a gap, what are your expectations?'. His reply was essentially, 'I don't know but I'll know if it's right when I see it!' Not to misrepresent Mr Hendon, it was a considered and measured response 'I don't believe the government should tell you what to do as we are not experts in these matters, you all are, you should agree a course of action amongst yourselves with Nominet as the spokesperson and propose a solution around governance and regulation back to us' he also cautioned us that we only had a year to resolve this matter and the response needed to be suitable as deemed by his dept or else ....?

There was a range of responses to the BERR statement from the members ranging from the purist 'leave us alone, the internet should never be regulated in at all', to 'how dare they, it's the government behaving like big brother' and from some of the larger registrars 'let's work it out with Nominet and propose a solution'.

Our view at Gandi is that putting aside our own commercial self interests, registrars have a moral responsibility to business and the general public to keep as much 'Internet real estate' as possible free for genuine use and we take a strong stand against, squatting, spamming, over dominance of advertising and abuse of secondary markets through extortion and touting. As many of you know we also believe your domain name, like your home, is your property (given you're not a squatter) and you should not be restricted in managing it in any way. We certainly won't suddenly stick an advertising hoarding on your home just because you're not living in it at the moment! We believe the industry is grown up enough to regulate itself given we take the time to debate strongly, talk to each other and Nominet and propose an effective solution to the UK government.

If the UK take a lead worldwide in self regulation of the domain name industry will other countries follow? The problems experienced by consumers and businesses with .uk are reflected ten-fold for .com and other free market TLD's.

What do you think?

There were many other topics debated at the conference, the role of secondary markets, trust online, child protection, phishing, parked sites etc but more in future blogs ...

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits?

Joe — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:04:00 +0000

Some of you may have seen earlier in the year that ICANN (the body in charge of regulating the domain name space) announced that it was going to liberalise the market for domain name extensions, e.g. the bit that follows the last '.' in a name, .com, .net., .co.uk, .eu, etc.

What this means is that in theory anyone can apply to become a registry in their own right, and get .theirname so that you can buy domain names from them and get yourname.theirname. ICANN have now announced that the 'evaluation' process for new extensions will be costly, $185,000. Well costly for you and me, but perhaps not for funds or speculators.

But what is point in all this? Does it matter? Should we care?

The justification for doing it is that the internet is growing, more people are coming online, it allows more choice, blah, blah, blah. Which has some truth to it. But in some ways there is already an infinite number of domain names available across each of the roughly 280 existing TLDs (from .ac -> .zw - there should be a catchy alphabet song for them!).

But what does it mean for you, the customer? Well, it does mean you can get more choice. You will be able to buy yourdomain.something. Whether this helps is a different matter. Many of these new extensions will be quite specific, which may help, e.g. myplace.restaurant, or myhouse.london, but it may just create more and more confusion that your chosen name can have so many different extensions, which one is really you?

One result of this will probably be that more and more people will want to authenticate that their domain name, whatever unusual form it takes, can be explicitly linked to them. The most common way to do this at the moment it through SSL certificates, where a third party will guarantee that the domain is owned by a particular individual/company, and that you are browsing on that site in a secure way. So this is something to think about and watch out for...

There is one group of people that will undoubtedly benefit from this liberalisation and that is the spammers, advertisers and squatters.

In the old days if you wanted to protect your brand you could buy all 280 extensions. No longer. With a potentially limitless number of extensions, there is no way that you can get yourbrand.allofthem, so even the most well protected global brands may find a few more lawsuits on the horizon. The beneficiaries of this will be the squatters and advertisers who will use establishedbrand.newtld as an advertising site, or domain auction target (buy this one back, for $xxx).

And then there will be the increased volume of ad sites, just showing endless streams of ad feeds on domain names with no real purpose except to make money for their owner. I always think about this in terms of domain names as property: if the best properties in your town (domains on your tld) were closed down and became advertising bill boards, would you stand for this as a resident? This is exactly what is happening online. Most of the best names/words are turning into bill boards, and it will only continue unless there is a regulatory change to stop or limit it.

So there you have it, the change is coming, the benefits are unclear. But one thing that is clear is that unless ICANN take more of a role in setting and enforcing codes of content for domain ownership/usage, we may find as customers we are browsing in a larger and more polluted domain space.

What do you think?

Why domain name services are not all equal

Wendy — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:47:00 +0100

We believe in domain ethics – your domain is more than just a name, it’s your online presence, your company, profile or project. It should be protected and you should get what you want and what you expect with no tricks. But, you say, surely all domain names are the same? Why should it matter who you buy a domain from as they all come from the same place anyway, right? Well no, unfortunately that’s not true. There are many reasons why different domain providers offer better or worse deals, and it's not just price.

Not all domain offers are what they seem. Different domain name providers allow you to do different things with your domain. Some have service restrictions and sneaky pricing. It's not just the restrictions on the domain that can be limiting, it's the little surprises you might find out after you've paid. Sometimes you only find out about a bad deal once you've been caught by it, but we've put together a list of a few things to watch out for in the tricky domain market.

1. Sneaky pricing - Different pricing for register (buy now £0.99 per year!) and renewal (oops it costs more next year) - Different pricing for transfers out (oh, you want to leave, that'll be £xx) - The cost of a .co.uk at the registry is £2.50 per year. Companies selling below this have an ulterior motive!

2. Service restrictions - Can't get full DNS control - pay more for additional services

3. Front running/'sniffing' - Using your domain search data to buy domains before you do, or selling your domain search data. More references.

4. Account lockins - Locking your account for a period following changes, prevents transfer outs. More by Slashdot.

5. Domain ownership - Not the owner of your domain, some companies buy it on your behalf and then rent it to you.

6. Privacy - Selling your whois data/customer data

Gandi offers full DNS control, no sneaky pricing, no front running and no account lock ins. Our prices are fair, but profitable, so we have no incentive to constantly upsell things you don't need and bombard you with marketing messages. As one of our customers Miconian writes, ‘I used to see gandi as a discount registrar, but I now see them as offering a premium service: the implicit agreement to leave me the hell alone and let me register my domains in peace.’ We make sure you own your domain, this was one of the early reasons for Gandi's success. We do not sell your data and offer protection from whois spam and the ability to hide personal details.

We talk about domain ethics but do we follow through? We think so but what do you think?

Gandi UK Team

Have a read of this follow up article talking about other dodgy registrar practices.

Who is Gandi and why should I care about them?

Wendy — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:32:00 +0100

Ah a good question. Who is this strange and wonderful French domain registrar and hosting provider, and why should I believe they are wonderful? What does it mean to believe in domain name ethics? Well to understand Gandi you have to go back to the very beginning...

You see Gandi was founded out of the desire to create free and fair access to homes on the internet; your address, your domain name. Back in the murky days of 1999 the AFNIC (controllers of the .fr domain) had restrictions on selling .fr's, so that only companies and trademark holders could own them. This meant the average French individual could not buy one, so instead they bought the GTLDs, e.g. .com or .net.

But in those days the GTLDs were sold by an exclusive group of mainly US registrars, at reasonably punchy prices (some still sell for $35+ per year) and with some unsavoury terms (more about that later). The original founders of Gandi set about creating a registrar that was for everyone, that encouraged domain ownership, made it affordable and accessible.

Gandi became one of the first ICANN accredited domain registrar when it was opened up to new companies in 1999, and helped pioneer the domain market we have today.

Gandi slashed the price of domain names, selling at a fixed €12 price (only a small mark-up on the registry cost, and not a lot in 1999 when the Euro was worth less than a Dollar), so that it was more accessible to a wider audience.

And more importantly Gandi setup its terms and conditions so that the domain buyer was made the 'owner' of the domain, and not the registrar. This may sound very obvious (why wouldn't the person paying be the owner?) but was actually unusual back then. Instead domain registrars would often take your money, put the domain name in their own name, and then lease it to you. So you might find out a few years later when you wanted to leave that you didn't actually own the domain name at all, despite paying for it. Very dodgy.

But not Gandi. With Gandi you were always the owner of your domain, and this was a very important reason why Gandi developed a strong following in Europe and the US. For those that read the legal agreements and were passionate about how it 'should be', they found Gandi and stayed with us.

Nearly 10 years later, this hasn't changed. Gandi was bought in 2005, by an experienced team of internet entrepreneurs, Stephan Ramoin, CEO, Joe White, CFO/COO and Eirik Pettersen, CTO who had always believed in fairness, transparency and innovative, products and services on the internet. Gandi continues to push for a fairer approach to domain buying and selling, and customer led products and services. We take a stand against spammers, domain squatters, and dodgy practices in the industry. We build great products for you to buy or not as you choose. We don't spend money on advertising, instead we prefer that our customers are our advocates. If you don't believe in our services, we shouldn't be selling them!

We believe your domain is more than just a name but your online presence on the internet whether it’s a home for your business, project or profile. And as such should be supported and protected. We intend to provide an alternative set of products which support you to do this. As many of you know we released our revolutionary virtualised hosting product recently for our tech savvy customers and we will be launching tools for customers who want build well designed, hosted websites easily and quickly very soon.

So there you have it. Gandi was founded on the principle of providing services 'as they should be', honest, fair, reasonably priced and with your interests at heart. We welcome you to join us and make your home with us online. Viva l'internet!

(For those of you interested in a bit of net history, click here, an article written in 2000 looking at domain providers legal contracts. Network solutions was given a 1 out of 5 rating for the fairness of its contract, while Gandi was given 5 stars - "Three registrars currently enjoy a perfect five-star legal rating. Contracts with these companies tend to favor consumers. For example, a Paris-based registrar named Gandi.net states clearly in its agreement: "The client owns the registered domain name." Also, the firm can't change its contracts at will, except for fee changes.")

Gandi UK Team

Gandi has arrived in the UK!

Joe — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:07:00 +0100

The Gandi UK team has opened the doors to business! Jolly good show. The first thing you'll notice is the new 'US flag' on the gandi website (I thought Gandi UK was launching?!?). Well that's because the Union Jack (or is it the Union Flag?) now points to the UK English version of the Gandi site and the proud Stars and Stripes points to the international English version. Why not take a look.

But what does it all mean to me? Well here's a summary for you.

Your website

Well the UK English version is now tailored to you. That means UK prices (in pounds), UK specific text (where we feel there is a need for a difference) and UK specific content, e.g. news or offers. For example, when blog articles are published by the UK team they will appear at the top of the news section within the UK English version. Prices and offers on the homepage will always be in GBP and specific to the UK audience.

Your domain

To kick things off we've lowered the price of the .co.uk and .org.uk domain names to £3 (ex VAT) per year. Remember with every Gandi domain you get full DNS control, a free blog, 5 email mailboxes with infinite aliases (1 GB storage), full customer support, and privacy protection. While you will find cheaper .uk domains on the market, you won't find one that includes all this. It's also part of our philosophy to sell domains at a reasonable price (not as loss leaders), so that you know we're not just trying to lure you in to sell you something else. We also believe, unlike some providers that you should have unrestricted access to managing your domain as it is more than just a name but your online presence. But more about our philosophy another time.

Your team

You now have a dedicated UK team based in London working to support our UK Gandi customers and promote our ethical domain and cutting edge hosting services to new faces far and wide. We are keen to get your feedback on what you like about Gandi and what you think we could do better. And how you came to us in the first place? While support will continue to be offered from our multilingual team in Paris, the UK team will ensure that you get the level of service you require and that we are on top of UK specific issues.

Your projects

We've launched our popular Gandi supports policy in the UK with the new citizen journalism site www.demotix.com (more about them another time). Gandi supports has the goal of helping businesses that share our vision for the internet to get started online. We want to put our money where our mouth is and help others achieve the same goals. Please contact us (direction at gandi.net) if you think you’d be a good UK candidate for Gandi supports project, but make sure you read our pages first to see the kinds of business we support.

And don't worry if you're not from the UK, the reality is that with additional English language team members we'll be able to extend our love far and wide to our English speaking cousins.

We look forward to working with you all!

UK Team