Are there any domain registrars that are cooperatives? If not, are there any that are non-profits?
When I search I find lots of companies wanting to sell domain registration services to cooperatives and non-profits, not registrars that ARE cooperatives or non-profits.
If there aren’t any known that meet that criteria, who’s cool. I’ve used Gandi[.]net for years and they’ve been great but they charge more than double than what we’re currently paying for our .coop TLD. Plus I know people were worried Gandi might not be cool anymore since they’ve apparently been purchased, although I haven’t seen any material differences since I heard that.
I hope someone else can answer this question positively. I haven’t had any luck finding domain name registrars that are anything but capitalists. The closest is https://njal.la/ - but they aren’t actually a domain name registrar - they are a reseller, so they are simply buying from other registrars.
May First researched what it would take to be come a domain name registrar many years ago, but found the requirements impossible to meet.
However, a cursory look here:
Doesn’t show anything outrageous (I don’t remember what discouraged us in our previous research). Maybe if someone reads the fine print it will become apparent.
I would love to see a coop or non-profit take it on.
The main catch is that their site is only available in French. If you have someone who is literate in French, that shouldn’t be an issue.
Many things appear to be very manual, but for those of us who host our DNS with MayFirst, that’s not a problem. Just register, set it to auto-renew, set your nameservers and you’re good for the foreseeable future.
They also have higher prices for .coop than what one of my cooperatives is paying now. If we were not already spending more than we earn, this would probably not be an issue for us. For now though, we have to watch every little expense. I’m looking forward to coming back to this post again in the future!
It depends on what sort of domains, I rely on the folks at GreenNet, they’ve been around for a very long time and they’re a member of APC, the folks at Webarchitects Co-op they are able to register their own domains under Nominet for UK domains and use Gandi as reseller. Co-op aside but friendly to co-ops and our movement, I’d check the folks at Glauca and Mythic Beasts.
I emailed them explaining that I can’t read French but I wanted to use them anyway. They took my order by email, sent me a link to pay with a credit card, and after I put in the transfer code and waited the mandatory waiting period, it was done.
If you want to register your domain with a cooperative, this is the best option I’ve found.
One of the reasons this was so easy was because MayFirst was already hosting our DNS. This means that all the registrar had to do was make sure that the entry for our domain in the root nameservers did not change. While I’m sure they could have entered in a zone file, I felt a lot safer knowing that the transfer would be as simple as possible.
For us, the only real change is that instead of paying a for-profit corporation, we’re paying a co-op to tell the world what namservers to use for our domain. It’s a little higher price, but it’s worth it to us to spend that extra money to stand behind our value of supporting other cooperatives.
You are correct. They are currently a reseller and working toward getting approved as a registrar. One of my cooperatives is doing their part to help make sure they make it that far (and I hope that the other co-ops that I’m involved in will follow)
