Want to Resell Domains? Choose Your Registrar Wisely!

With the multitude of registrars offering reseller solutions and platforms, it can be difficult to find the registrar that is right for you.  The best registrar will be one that offers a comprehensive set of features, a long history of operational excellence, and an abundance of services to resell:

1.) A Large Variety of TLDs from a Single Source

Whether one is only interested in selling a few TLDs or many, going with a registrar with a wide selection of TLDs is better than a registrar with less.  More TLDs means more options and less headaches over the long term.

Imagine being approached by a large customer of yours about a TLD that you don't offer.  You check with your registrar and they don't offer that TLD.  Now you are in a bind.  You either tell your customer, at the risk of losing their business, that you can't offer the TLD or you frantically try to provision the new TLD through another registrar.  Trying to bring up another TLD through another registrar can entail:

1. Review and execution of a new reseller agreement, which possibly adds more financial commitment or requires upfront capital.
2. Possibly time and energy to integrate a new API with the new registrar
3. Additional time for initial and ongoing testing to ensure the integration stability

As one can see, the scenario is not pretty.  With a registrar like HEXONET, which has a wide variety of domains, such problems are avoided.  In fact, adding a new TLD can be as simple as a few mouse clicks.  This is the power of a registrar with hundreds of TLDs.

2.) ccTLD Growth

Market economics are hard to deny.  The domain industry is seeing a prominence of ccTLDs.  At of the end July, 2010, the following stats were published:

• .COM - 88,831,766 Domains
• .DE - 13,752,101 Domains
• .NET - 13,241,122 Domains
• .UK - 8,654,260 Domains
• .ORG - 8,611,202 Domains
• .CN - 7,246,686 Domains
• .INFO - 6,753,547 Domains
• .NL - 3,976,037 Domains
• .EU - 3,220,758 Domains
• .BIZ - 2,142,157 Domains

As the .com namespace becomes ever so scarce, ccTLDs as an alternative will continue to grow in popularity.  Having a registrar like HEXONET, who offers the wide selection of TLDs makes reselling ccTLDs a snap.

3.) Importance of High Performance Real-Time Systems

In a nutshell, having transactions execute within seconds mean more business for a reseller.  Resellers on a fast platform will have advantages over the competition on a slower platform.

• Check Domain Availability - Execution in seconds results in more domain searches; long execution times will result in customers leaving or never coming back to use your domain search again.
• Domain Registrations - Some registrar have parts of their system running in manual or batch mode, this means the actual registration may happen long afterward, putting a registration in jeopardy.  Registrations need to be completed within seconds and the respective WHOIS should be available immediately (registry dependent)
• Domain Modifications (such as WHOIS Uupdates, DNS Updates, ...etc.) should get processed to the respective registry immediately, thus providing you immediate feedback if an update was successful or not.

Speed and execution of the reseller platform will effect how customers view a reseller.  The faster and more reliable the registrar platform the better a reseller looks to the buying public.  At HEXONET, not only do we pride ourselves on having real-time systems throughout our platform, but also for having some of the fastest domain checks and transactions anywhere.

4.) Comprehensive Registry Features

Features and functionality provided by the various registries are intended to assist in the registration and management of domains.  Given the importance of these features, strangely enough not every reseller platform makes these features available.  HEXONET prides itself on allowing for as many registry features in our solution.

• Autorenew feature, including allowing for an autorenew grace period (a defined period of time, which allows you to delete a domain in this period and still receive a refund)
• Multiyear registrations
• IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) capabilities - though many registries allow IDN registrations not many registrars support it.  IDNs are however on the horizon.
• Transfer capability via all methods - many registrars do not offer the full range of transfer capabilities for the respective TLDs they sell

5.) Integration Flexibility

Many registrar systems only offer one way to connect with them.  As it is with TLD selection, a wide variety of choice makes it easier for the reseller.  HEXONET for instance allows for six different ways for resellers to connect and register domains:

• Mailrobot
• SOAP
• XML/RPC
• HTTPS-API
• WebInterface or User Interface or Control Panel
• And as of recently possibly an EPP Gateway

6.) Future Proofing  Through Accreditation Management

A reseller many potential one day have enough domains of a particular TLD to consider becoming directly accredited with a respective registry.  Reseller platforms without a TLD management solution will create huge pains for the reseller at the point of separation or migration.  This pain is also evident if the TLD management solution only supports a small number of TLDs (typically gTLDs only).  Again, support for a wide variety of domains is key.

HEXONET has a decade of experience and expertise with gTLDs/ICANN and ccTLDs.  Accreditation migration and management has been made as simple as flicking on a switch.  Because of the wide selection of TLDs offered at HEXONET, all gTLDs and most ccTLDs accreditation can be quickly and easily migrated for a reseller.

7.) Updated Engineering - The DNSSEC Example

Some reseller platforms are stagnant.  Feature releases are slow or nonexistent.  New TLDs may rarely happen.  Resellers stuck on such platforms are losing out on both revenue and big profits.  Resellers should look for a platform that is growing and constantly improving.  A simple test, as of the fall of 2010, for your registrar's engineering speed or willingness is to check if your registrar supports DNSSEC.

DNSSEC is a significant change to the way DNS is handled over the Internet.  If your registrar doesn't have DNSSEC or doesn't plan to support it, this might indicate engineering slowness.  To read more on DNSSEC and why your registrar should already be on top of this topic, please read the recent blog post "DNSSEC - Overview for Resellers".

If you have any questions or need advice on reseller platforms please feel free to direct your questions to [email protected].  HEXONET would be happy to provide more insight.