Despite growing competition from a crop of newly accredited ICANN registrars, Network Solutions remains by far the master of .com, .net and .org domains with more than 6.5 million names registered.

by Jeff Goldman [June 4, 2001]

Located in Herndon, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., Network Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1979 as a systems integration company. In 1992, they were awarded a contract with the National Science Foundation to administer domain names—in 1998, this government sactioned monopoly was undone and the field for rival registrars was opened with the formation of ICANN. In March 2000, Network Solutions was acquired by trust services provider VeriSign, Inc. for about $21 billion.

Tom Van Gorder is the Vice President of Sales and Business Development for VeriSign's Mass Markets Division, which now oversees Network Solutions. He notes that VeriSign's size and experience have a lot to offer to an ISP seeking a registrar partner, both in the company's size and in the diversity of its offerings.

"We really offer several substantial strengths," Van Gorder said. "One is the stability of our business—as you look at this marketplace, those registrars that are only in the domain name registration business have found the times pretty tough going these days. And we also bring a variety of other products and services in terms of adding incremental revenue streams."

Its got game
VeriSign offers two basic arrangements for ISPs. Within these two broad programs it covers just about any flavor an ISP could be seeking in a reseller relationship. And they've got a few signed up already—the company currently boasts 70,000 affiliates and 5,000 partners worldwide.

The Affiliate Program provides a classic click-through setup. Affiliates place a banner on their site which links to Network Solutions—they then receive a 20 percent commission on any purchases a customer makes after clicking on that link. That includes not only domain names, but a number of the company's other products and services.

There are a variety of links and banners available for affiliates to use, and there's no setup fee or minimum traffic required. Affiliates can view revenue reports through an online interface, and commission checks are mailed out on a quarterly basis.

The Partner Programs, on the other hand, are the best option for most ISPs, giving them far greater control over the interaction with their customers. Partners process domain registrations directly from their site, and receive discounted bulk pricing for the domains registered. The setup is extremely flexible—sites can be co-branded or private labeled and registrations can be run through email templates or an API—and payments can be processed either by the ISP or by VeriSign.

There are two options for processing domain name transactions. The first, Network Solutions' ISP Tools system, uses email templates, secured with VeriSign's digital certificates. Van Gorder notes that this is the simplest option by far.

"A lot of our smaller partners tend to really like that level of technology," Van Gorder said. "The implementation is very clean, very seamless, and very easy to work with."

For partners seeking more control over the process, though, there's another way to do it, according to Van Gorder. "We also have an API, with two flavors," he said. "There's a Java-based version for those partners that have Java-based skills, and then there's an XML version for those that prefer the XML side of it."

And the process can be as hidden as you like. Van Gorder notes that while VeriSign is happy to conceal itself completely from the customer, many partners prefer a co-branded site.

"Some of our partners, they really like the VeriSign brand out there," he said. "There's a level of credibility with us in the marketplace that they like to have associated with their business.

"But then some of our larger partners, who truly are in a very classic reseller model, want all of the customer interaction to be focused between them and their customer, and they don't want the VeriSign brand anywhere" Van Gorder said. "From our standpoint, it really makes no difference—we can go either way."

Partners can either bill the customer directly and then pay for the domains in bulk, or they can leave the credit card processing to VeriSign. According to van Gorder, the majority of partners use the wholesale pricing model, but the customer billing is available for smaller partners who want to leave that to the registrar.

The Partner Programs are split into three levels based on volume. Premier Partners are those who register 11-500 domains a month, Gold Partners must register 501-3,000 a month and Alliance Partners must register over 3,000 domain names a month. The higher levels offer not only discounted pricing, but improved support and marketing resources as well.

One-stop shopping
Want a small, personalized, deep-discount registrar where you'll be on a first-name basis with the owner? Look elsewhere. Network Solutions is certainly not the cheapest in the industry—according to van Gorder, bulk pricing is $10 and up. But if you want a solid setup with the market leader, providing a broad range of options with services that range far beyond just domain registration, then Network Solutions may have just the thing.

Network solutions also offers an array of country code top level domains (ccTLDs) and multi-lingual domains, both of which will be integrated with the partner API by the end of June. Additionally, resellers can access a variety of VeriSign's other services, allowing them to broaden their offering far beyond that of the average registrar. According to van Gorder, that's really what makes Network Solutions worth considering.

"If you look at the core value proposition that VeriSign brings to the market, it's products and services along that Internet continuum, from a business just beginning to establish their presence on the Internet, all the way up to a Fortune 100 business that's conducting pretty significant electronic commerce," Van Gorder said.

"So we really do have a product offering that scales with a particular business, whether it's a small, local ISP or some of the largest web hosting companies in the world," he added. "As a result of that, our business relationship becomes much more robust with a particular business partner, and much more strategic to their business, than just being a provider of domain names."

That kind of size and scalability also means that a VeriSign partner can be assured that they'll be accessing the latest improvements in technology as soon as they're available, from new top level domains to VeriSign's security solutions. It's a powerful proposition.

Network Solutions certainly has its detractors, and it's got growing competition from the wide variety of newly accredited registrars in the market, but it's here to stay. And as van Gorder notes, the reasons are pretty simple.

"We've got tremendous stability in the marketplace," he said. "We bring a wide variety of products and services, we've got great technology, and we've got dedicated customer service and support."

— End
         

Online resources:
	Registrar Directory
	Registrar Directory: Quick-Reference Chart
Related articles:
	[June 2, 2001]	No-Can-Do Attitude Alienates ICANN from Internet Community
	[May 25, 2001]	VeriSign Shuts Down TLD List
	[May 11, 2001]	ICANN Proposed Budget Leaked on the Web