Tucows has entered the domain name registry business.
Earlier today the Toronto based domain name registrar announced that it was acquiring Frank Schilling’s UNR which was his backend registry business. The transaction announced today appears to be solely for the backend services and not any domain extensions.
Schilling had previously sold off his registrar and aftermarket business to GoDaddy, while later divesting himself of his TLDs in an auction recently.
The acquisition means that Tucows will gain both the technology of a live domain name registry platform, as well as its 10 experienced staff.
Here’s the full announcement:
TORONTO—Oct. 1, 2021— Today Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC), the world’s largest wholesale domain registrar, announced that it has purchased UNR Corp.’s registry platform service. This newly added platform technology will complement Tucows’ existing reseller and retail domain services.In addition to acquiring UNR’s registry platform service, Tucows will add 10 veteran industry experts to the company. With over 150 years of combined experience, these expert engineers and business leaders will be vital additions to Tucows’ expanding team.
“A critical piece of this deal with UNR is the ability to welcome their technical team to Tucows,” said David Woroch, Executive Vice President at Tucows. “With experience spanning over two decades, they are a very strong team with deep competency in the domain name industry. They have built and operated multiple domain and DNS platforms, and we intend to leverage and integrate their expertise across all of our domain business.”
“While I am slowly getting out of the industry, it’s important to me to know that my businesses are being left in the best hands,” said Frank Schilling, CEO and founder of UNR Corp. “Over the past 20 years it’s been an honour to work with Tucows and I’m thrilled to see our registry platform and technical team join their company.”
This asset agreement was signed and is effective as of October 1, 2021, with certain ICANN approvals expected in the normal course of business.
While the next round of TLDs might be not be as soon as some industry insiders might like, there’s definitely an appetite for switching backend providers.
As Tucows is publicly traded we’ll probably learn more about this acquisition later this year.
