A Webhosting firm with big dreams, and it's making some big changes to help its vision become a working reality. With over 160,000 domains registered, this registrar could make its naming services work for your ISP business, too.

by Jeff Goldman [May 29, 2001]

Advanced Internet Technologies, or AIT, is a Webhosting firm with big dreams, and it's making some big changes to help those dreams become a reality. While those changes are happening, its domain registration services are going strong, with over 160,000 domains registered.

The company is currently undergoing a massive restructuring which will separate it into a number of different subsidiaries. One of those subsidiaries, AITcom, will be focused on providing Internet services to small businesses. Among those services will be AIT's ICANN-accredited domain registration site, n@meIT Corp., soon to be renamed AIT Domains. Got all that?

When the changes are made and the dust has cleared, what you'll see is a solid Webhosting company with a complete domain registration offering—while the registrar's reseller services are largely marketed within its hosting client base, you'd do well to check them out even if you're not looking for a hosting partner as well.

AIT’s registrar and Webhosting reseller services are wholly private labeled, with competitive pricing and an optional API that can make the entire registration process impressively seamless.

Ed McDaries, AITcom's CEO, explains that reselling has always been the its aim.

"AIT's focus from day one has been to build a very strong reseller network," McDaries said. "Right now, we have over 8000 resellers that resell AIT hosting. Given that that's the way we approached the web hosting market and we're now hosting 160,000 domains, we did the same thing with the domain name registrar."

AIT was founded in a basement back in 1996, and now boasts over 150 employees. Last year, it had revenues of nearly $20 million. This reseller thing has served them pretty well.

Want to be an RSP?
n@meIT's Registration Service Provider (RSP) Program is a broad-based reseller service, which allows just about anybody to get involved in domain registration. The basic setup is targeted toward AIT's hosting resellers, allowing users to simply register domains on behalf of their customers at a bulk rate.

McDaries explains that the program has really grown in spite of itself; the company has always seen it as a service secondary to its hosting offering.

"I've not spent one dime on advertising n@meIT, and it's got over 100,000 domains now in the database," he said. "What's interesting is that still, over 50 percent of the n@meIT database is not even AIT hosting customers."

Obviously, they're doing something right.

One of the things they're doing right is pricing, which ranges from $9.99 down to $7 or so per domain name, as volume increases. McDaries said AIT has gone below $7 on a few transactions because of volume.

"We've hovered right around the $7 per year price point for the bulk customers that have that kind of business," McDaries said.

At AIT, volume is cumulative, not monthly—which means that even smaller customers can accumulate major volume discounts over the years. And McDaries notes that for a number of resellers, that's an important difference. "We don't say you've got to register so many domains each month before you get any special price points," McDaries said. "Ours is a rolling plan."

For a ISP, hosting or design company that needs to register a handful of domains each month on behalf of its customers, this can be a very attractive solution.

I want it all
What about the ISP that wants something more personalized in exchange for a significant registration volume? For those customers, AIT will go to the next level, using an API to completely conceal AIT from the customer and allow the ISP look like a full-service registrar in its own right—and there's never a setup fee.

Still, McDaries explains, they won't do that, go the distance, for just anyone.

"They've got to have significant traffic, a significant channel that makes sense," McDaries said. "We make a business decision—do we think that particular channel has the volume that's going to make sense for us to devote the R&D time to developing the solution and to helping them implement that solution on their system?"

For an ISP that does enough business to warrant the work, AIT will do everything in its power to disappear from customers’ view. According to McDaries, that's how AIT has always worked.

"We have taken enormous steps to remove the AIT thumbprint on what our customers get from us in terms of service," he said. "We want them to be able to turn around and build their own customer base, and feel confident that we're not going to try to come in the back door and market back to their customers."

One of the key ways that AIT hides itself is in the credit card statement. If the reseller charges the domain directly to the customer's card, they won't see AIT on the bill—they'll see the generic reference, "Registration Billing Services." The only thing that will show AIT Domains is working behind the scenes, is when a customer completed a whois search.

It's all in the service
Seven-dollars is a pretty great deal, regardless of the arrangement—but McDaries doesn't want to focus on price only.

"The thing that resellers get is not just a price point—they get customized, personalized service," McDaries said. "All these acronyms—ISP, RSP, what-ever-everybody forgets that middle letter is service. AIT and n@meIT, we are not technology companies—we are service companies."

In providing that service, McDaries explains, AIT is determined to stay ahead of the competition.

"The only downside to this whole registration piece is the R&D time you've got to commit," McDaries said. "There's a lot of programming on the back end. We've found in doing our cost analysis that the six bucks per year is a minimal cost compared to the R&D time you've got to put in to constantly stay on top of the changes."

Still, the registrar doesn't offer multilingual domains or ccTLDs. McDaries views that as purely a business decision, choosing to keep things as simple as possible.

"It's way too complicated," he said. "Every country has a different way of doing business—it just doesn't make sense from a business perspective."

And what could be more important that service and price? AIT's solid business plan serves its customers so well that few of them ever need to know that n@meIT itself has a staff of just one.

"N@meIT is a one-man operation, we've got the thing so automated," McDaries said. "But if you call some of the bulk customers, they'd never know it, because we have gone over and above on the personalized service and support. That's the one reason why they keep coming back, besides the low price. We will sit there and we will personally manage their transactions, down to the penny."

— End
         

Online resources:
	Registrar Directory
	Registrar Directory: Quick-Reference Chart
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