Small, friendly and promising that it would never become a rival hosting firm, this domain name registrar might seem more like dotHeaven than dotEarth for small ISPs.

by Jeff Goldman [May 7, 2001]

The New Jersey-based dotEarth.com offers two flexible plans for ISPs who want to enter the domain registration market. And those ISPs can feel particularly safe working with dotEarth.com—the registrar offers no hosting or Web design services of its own.

The company was founded back in 1996 by a group of programmers, spread throughout Europe and North America, who had worked together on various projects through the years. John Wong, one of those programmers, is now the registrar's CEO.

Wong notes that the move into domain registration was simply a logical step for the group. "We wanted to improve services with respect to domain registrations for clients that we had, and so we started doing domain registrations from there," he said.

At first, the company resold Network Solutions' services, until dotEarth.com was ICANN-accredited in July of 1999. The company has grown since then, but it's stayed true to its original purpose -- the only services dotEarth.com offers are domain registrations, renewals, email forwarding, and associated DNS services. According to Wong, the registrar has no plans to ever offer its own Webhosting services.

Keeping it simple
dotEarth.com offers two basic reseller plans, both of which are focused on making things as straightforward as possible for ISP partners. And there's room for customization, depending on how much control the ISP wants over the process.

The most basic option is the Member Account. Member ISPs simply go to dotEarth.com's login page, sign in with a username and password, and register domains for their customers. Wong notes that the attraction of this setup lies in its simplicity.

"It's basically a way for them to get lower prices," Wong said.

The Member Account is essentially a straightforward membership program—all registrations made are charged to the same account, allowing volume discounts to be accumulated with multiple registrations. Bulk pricing ranges from $12.50 to $7.50 per domain per year, depending on volume.

Alternatively, the Member Account can be used as a referral program, allowing customers to connect directly to dotEarth.com's site by clicking on a banner which contains the member's account code. The customer then pays the registrar's retail rate of $12.50 per domain per year, and the referring ISP is paid a commission for each domain registered. Commissions increase with volume, and are paid out monthly.

The more advanced option is the Branded Website. For a setup fee of about $250, dotEarth.com will create a co-branded site which shows both dotEarth.com's and the ISP's logos. A link on the ISP's home page takes a customer to the co-branded site to register domains; the customer is returned to the ISP's home page when they're done.

According to Wong, the Branded Website ultimately has the same purpose as the Member Account: keeping the process as simple as possible for the ISP.

"It allows fast addition of domain registration to anyone's list of services," Wong said.

The key difference offered by the Branded Website is that ISPs can set their own pricing for the domains. Bulk rates are the same as those for the Member Account, ranging from $12.50 down to $7.50 per domain per year. The ISP can either handle the billing themselves, or leave the credit card processing to dotEarth.com.

Where everybody knows your name
The services dotEarth.com offers are relatively basic. The registrar doesn't currently offer any ccTLDs or multilingual registrations, though Wong claims both are planned for the near future. In the meantime, however, dotEarth.com is accepting advance registrations for the new TLDs, though they won't charge a fee unless the registration is successful.

The company's still relatively small, but as Wong notes, it's all about maintaining the balance between man and machine.

"We have twenty people and a lot of computers," Wong said. "For anyone who's been turned off by the enormity of registrars like Network Solutions, small can be a very good thing."

And according to Wong, the registrar is determined to hold on to the personal touch as it continues to grow.

"A focus of dotEarth.com is to provide courteous and prompt customer support," he said.

— End