Squarespace stops the bleeding, GoDaddy down year over year.
Squarespace has been registering fewer .com domains each month since taking over Google Domains, but Verisign’s latest data show the trend reversed itself to start this year. Here’s the trend:
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- August (pre-acquisition) 250,324
- September (acquisition occurred September 8) 189,713, down 24% month over month
- October 160,931, down 15%
- November 145,141, down 10%
- December 136,595, down 6%
- January 2024 173,067, up 27%
What happened in January? Was it seasonal? A new marketing campaign? Let’s wait another month to see what happened in February.
While month-over-month comparisons make sense for a rapidly changing situation like that at Squarespace, I’m trying something new for the overall .com chart this month: I will compare year over year instead of month over month.
Year-over-year comparisons should smooth over seasonal trends. They might also shed light on Verisign’s claim that US registrars are trading margin for registrations.
Indeed, new registrations at GoDaddy were down 7% this January compared to a year ago. Of course, GoDaddy serves many markets. And it was a mixed bag for other registrars.
Another thing these year-over-year numbers show is the surge at Gname.
Below is a chart showing how the largest registrars did in terms of new registrations in January 2024, which are the latest available numbers. Note that the rankings include multiple registrar accreditations within families of registrars. You can see the list of registrars at the end of this post.
1. GoDaddy.com (NYSE: GDDY) 729,582 (782,394 in January 2023)
2. Namecheap Inc. 309,133 (287,032)
3. Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) 177,540 (169,605)
4. Squarespace (NYSE: SQSP) 173,067 (280,377)
5. Newfold Digital 172,230 (158,231)
6. Gname.com 138,537 (94,345)
7. Hostinger 120,688 (76,994)
8. Wix 85,538 (75,481)
9. IONOS 82,060 (69,170)
10. TurnCommerce 75,202 (75,417)
Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations under management as of the end of January.
1. GoDaddy 55,612,116 (56,460,220 in January 2023)
2. Newfold Digital 12,173,960 (12,977,415)
3. Tucows 10,952,352 (11,325,219)
4. Namecheap 9,588,294 (8,919,114)
5. Squarespace 8,151,239 (7,196,399)
6. TurnCommerce 5,957,950 (6,180,371)
7. IONOS# 5,793,480 (5,495,138)
8. Gname 4,547,923 (3,052,943, up 49%)
9. Alibaba 4,165,292 (4,548,403)
10. Team Internet Group 3,647,574 (3,460,216)
Many domain companies have multiple accreditations, and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.
- GoDaddy includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains, Uniregistry, GoDaddy Corporate Domains, MeshDigital, the 5 “Go Country” registrars, and 123 Reg
- Namecheap includes Namecheap and Spaceship
- Tucows includes Tucows, Enom, Ascio and EPAG
- Newfold Digital Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain, Bigrock, Network Solutions, Register.com, MarkMonitor, SnapNames registrars, and Crazy Domains/Dreamscape. There are other Newfold registrars, but these are the biggest.
- Squarespace includes Squarespace and Google
- TurnCommerce Includes NameBright and DropCatch registrars
- IONOS includes Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys, and world4you
- Team Internet Group includes Key-Systems, 1API, Internet.bs, TLD Registrar Solutions, RegistryGate, Moniker, Instra
Frank says
Note – Tucows also includes Hover and Exact Hosting.
Andrew Allemann says
Those domains are included in their other accreditations.
Jainam Himanshu Shah says
Why do registrar’s go for multiple accreditations?
Andrew Allemann says
There are two main reasons.
First, it could be they started with one but acquired other companies. For example, Tucows acquired Enom.
Second, many registrars obtain multiple accreditation for drop catching expired domains.
There are other situations, but these are the two primary ones.