Cloudflare is going to disrupt the domain name registration market with its new move. The content delivery network (CDN) provider has launched Cloudflare Registrar with a promise to provide domain names at a wholesale price, which is true for first year as well as for every subsequent year.
The reason behind launching Cloudflare Registrar is quite simple. The domain name registrars offer discounts on domain names when customers register a domain name for first time. But they increase the price at the time of renewal.
In the best cases, the renewal price is around twice the original offer, whereas it’s more than twenty times in worst cases, found Cloudflare. Furthermore, the registrars charge additionally for other products like DNSSEC, which should be included with the domain name for free.
The top-level domain registries (like .com, .org, .net, .in) provide domain names at a wholesale price which remains relatively consistent over time. What the domain name registrars do is record customers as the owner of a specific domain name.
For making customers the owners of domain names, the registrars need to send some commands to an API. For working as a middle-man, they charge customers inappropriately.
On the occasion of its 8th birthday, Cloudflare gave the present to its customers, providing domain names at best possible price. The Cloudflare Registrar will allow customers to enable two-factor authentication, lock the domain registration by default, and automatically enable security services like DNSSEC.
“‘I love my domain registrar.’ Has anyone ever said this? From before Cloudflare even launched in September 2010, our early beta customers were literally begging us: ‘Will you please launch a registrar too?!’ Today we’re doing just that, launching the first registrar we hope you’ll be able to say you love. It’s built around three principles: trust, security, and always-fair pricing,” wrote Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in a blog post.
Also read: Cloudflare join forces with Google, Microsoft and others to reduce bandwidth costs
Currently, the Cloudflare Registrar doesn’t support new domain name registrations. Cloudflare customers can transfer their existing domain names to it.
Image source: Cloudflare
