In today’s world, the sheer count of Web Hosting Businesses is growing exponentially with a constant flow of new players entering the industry every day. Looking at current trends, one can see that mid-sized hosting companies are the ones bearing the most brunt. These companies find it hard to compete with larger hosting companies and their heavy marketing dollars. At the same time, smaller hosting companies are also eating into their customer base.
If you are running a mid-sized hosting business then you would agree that there are some serious business challenges today, including the need for differentiation, profitability and boost in new customer acquisition.
Domain names have long been a “foot-in-the-door” product for most hosting companies that have recorded high growth. The advent of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) has shifted the focus more towards new & exciting extensions that promise better and shorter names at a fraction of the cost of a premium .com domain name.
This is the right time for you to seize the opportunity and leverage it to ramp up new registrations by using domain names as the primary product to get customers onboard. This, however, takes careful planning and a well-oiled backend partner to ensure that you are able to fully leverage the new domains opportunity.
Based on our experience, the secret to leveraging domains is a simple 3-step Model:
1) Consolidation
As of today, there are 350+ gTLDs that have gone LIVE (with 100s more to come). It’s critical for Hosting companies to ensure that they work towards a model wherein they work with a single provider for all of these TLDs for a single point of integration. Managing multiple TLD integration points, pricing negotiations and uptimes can get operationally taxing.
A single point of integration with an experienced partner along with a simple fixed fee model across all TLDs and aggressive SLAs is, naturally, the most efficient model for you to manage your domain name product offering.
2) Tailored Reseller Program
Long gone are the days when a plain Domain Reseller model through a local provider made sense. Today, hosting companies are on the hunt for a Domains Partner that provides them with essential services around domain name registrations. Ideally, and seriously it’s not too much to ask, your Domains Partner must have a consultative approach to the partnership with dedicated PoCs and a 24×7 support model in place.
Your ideal Domains Partner should be someone with an impeccable repute offering you an advisory approach towards the success of your domains business and a competitive price point.
3) ICANN Accreditation
If you aim to reach the top of the food chain, it’s imperative for you to consider getting ICANN Accredited and taking complete control over your domains business.
Simply put, you need to ensure that you directly procure domain names from the respective Registries such as Verisign and PIR.
ICANN Accreditation has many benefits: a clear cost advantage as you don’t have to pay the Reseller Fee any more, complete control over security of VIP domain names through Domain locking, etc. As a Registrar, all the WHOIS requests show your brand name which boosts your marketing goals.
IN CONCLUSION
It is imperative for you as a Hosting business to align yourself with the ever-changing industry and join forces with the right partners for critical product offerings like Domains and the right time is now.
HOW DO WE KNOW THIS?
Having been in the domain & hosting industry for over a decade now, LogicBoxes has helped over 100 hosting companies to identify business requirements and grow exponentially via an ICANN Accreditation. This article is written basis the key insights that we’ve acquired through working with our partners. If you’d like to learn anything specific or have any questions, feel free to comment below!
