The world's second-largest registrar with over 3.7 million domain names registered, Register.com offers a Global Partner Network with a wide variety of options for ISPs.

by Jeff Goldman [July 16, 2001]

The New York City-based Register.com was founded back in 1994. Five years later, the five original registrars selected by ICANN to participate in the testbed phase of the Shared Registration System were AOL, CORE, France Telecom, Melbourne IT, and Register.com. According to Lori Faye Fischler, the company's Managing Director of International Sales, Register.com was a small fish in a big pond at the time.

"Register.com was a very small, entrepreneurial company that had actually done a lot of registrations itself, so it was familiar with the Network Solutions process," Fischler said. "So we were in a very good situation to design not only a registration solution, but a management solution with which to permit people to register and manage their domain names."

Last year, Register.com made two significant acquisitions which helped to broaden its offering. One was Afternic.com, which provides a marketplace for the reselling of domain names. While the offering isn't currently tied to any of Register.com's partner programs, Fischler notes that there's a huge market for this kind of business.

Register.com's affiliate program is similar to most others—an affiliate places a banner on their site that links to Register.com's retail site—the affiliate then receives a commission on any registration a customer makes after clicking on the link. Register.com offers a variety of links and banners to choose from, and there's no setup fee or minimum traffic requirement for the program.

The registrar's Global Partner Network offers two essential programs, each of which can be set up in a number of different ways. The first, the Commission Program, allows the partner to leave all billing and customer support to Register.com; the partner then receives a commission for every domain name registered. The second option, the Wholesale Program, allows the partner to control all aspects of the customer relationship by purchasing domains in bulk, then reselling them to end users.

But that's hardly the extent of the choices. Whether partners select the Wholesale or Commission option, they can implement either of them using Register.com's BestSRS solution, its API, or even email templates.

BestSRS is a software products that uses radio buttons to permit partners to customize Register.com's pre-built partner site as much or as little as they like. With a click of a button, partners can replace any wording on the site with any language they like, insert banner ads or links anywhere on the site, and add or remove specific offerings in any imaginable combination: the options are pretty much limitless. Partners can even go in and edit any of the HTML directly.

According to Fischler, it's the speed and ease of implementation that make BestSRS the simplest option for most partners. "With a click of a button, you can customize the registration solution in a very, very brief period of time, and then be up and running, taking registrations, and having the tools to manage the system," she said.

Alternatively, partners can use Register.com's Third Party Protocol, a flexible API which permits the partner to fully integrate the registration service with their current offering. And partners who would prefer to do so can also use email templates to process registrations.

Fischler notes that, regardless of the option selected, the focus is on ease of use-on a global scale. "I want to emphasize that this is a global partner network," she said. "We are very focused on providing tools and services to our global partners that are extremely easy to implement as well as to customize and translate."

There's no setup fee for any of the programs—a partner will only be charged a fee if they sign up for a program and then fail to implement Register.com's offering. "It's just to make sure that people do go ahead and implement the solution," Fischler said. "We're far more interested in having the partner achieve their objective of going live, generating revenues, and providing this additional service."

Cadillac service
Register.com is hardly a discount provider—you won't be able to get the registrar's bulk pricing for domain names much below $10, no matter how many you agree to purchase in advance. But the company's size, its strength in the market, and the range of options it provides, all make it a solid choice for ISPs looking for a registrar partner.

Fischler notes that the company's intent in assembling the partner programs was to fit within each partner's operations, rather than forcing a partner to adjust to the registrar's needs.

"We're looking to provide additional products and services to our global partners in a manner that doesn't ask them to change how they operate," she said. "We do not view ourselves as vendors; we view ourselves as partners that are interested in the continued growth and retention of customers that the global partners are looking for."

To that end, the registrar ensures that all partner sites are fully branded, with Register.com's presence as hidden as the partner wants it to be. Both the BestSRS solution and the API enable the partner to fully private-label the offerings so that an end user won't ever see Register.com's name.

According to Fischler, another significant aspect of the offering is the integrated availability of both ccTLDs and multilingual domain names. "It's in the API, and it's in the BestSRS software," she said. "We offer approximately 30 ccTLDs on a fully-automated basis in real time, available for our global partners in addition to the .com, net., and .org domain names. And we offer multilingual domain names as well."

Register.com also offers both online domain management functions and partner management interfaces-still, as with all other aspects of the offering, those can be turned on or off as the partner chooses. "The partner makes the decision," Fischler said. "Some hosting companies may not want end users to be able to change the DNS; they may want to do it for them. So domain management by the end user is really at the partner's option."

With over 650 partners worldwide, Register.com has a solid partner offering that's certainly worth investigating-and, Fischler adds, it's worth noting that the registrar's profitable as well, something that few companies in the industry can currently boast.

"Given that Register.com is the second-largest registrar in the world, our partners can have a great deal of confidence in our security, reliability, scalability, and ability to really meet their needs-and to be around for a long time to come," she said.

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Related articles:
	[June 29, 2001]	eBay Won't—Afternic Will—Sell Domain Name
	[May 25, 2001]	VeriSign Shuts Down TLD List
	[May 11, 2001]	ICANN Proposed Budget Leaked on the Web
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