1.) A Large Variety of TLDs from a Single Source

Whether one is only interested in selling a few TLDs or many, going with a registrar with a wide selection of TLDs is better than a registrar with less.  More TLDs means more options and less headaches over the long term.

Imagine being approached by a large customer of yours about a TLD that you don’t offer.  You check with your registrar and they don’t offer that TLD.  Now you are in a bind.  You either tell your customer, at the risk of losing their business, that you can’t offer the TLD or you frantically try to provision the new TLD through another registrar.  Trying to bring up another TLD through another registrar can entail:

1. Review and execution of a new reseller agreement, which possibly adds more financial commitment or requires upfront capital.
2. Possibly time and energy to integrate a new API with the new registrar
3. Additional time for initial and ongoing testing to ensure the integration stability

As one can see, the scenario is not pretty.  With a registrar like HEXONET, which has a wide variety of domains, such problems are avoided.  In fact, adding a new TLD can be as simple as a few mouse clicks.  This is the power of a registrar with hundreds of TLDs.

2.) ccTLD Growth

Market economics are hard to deny.  The domain industry is seeing a prominence of ccTLDs.  At of the end July, 2010, the following stats were published:

• .COM – 88,831,766 Domains
• .DE – 13,752,101 Domains
• .NET – 13,241,122 Domains
• .UK – 8,654,260 Domains
• .ORG – 8,611,202 Domains
• .CN – 7,246,686 Domains
• .INFO – 6,753,547 Domains
• .NL – 3,976,037 Domains
• .EU – 3,220,758 Domains
• .BIZ – 2,142,157 Domains

As the .com namespace becomes ever so scarce, ccTLDs as an alternative will continue to grow in popularity.  Having a registrar like HEXONET, who offers the wide selection of TLDs makes reselling ccTLDs a snap.

3.) Importance of High Performance Real-Time Systems

In a nutshell, having transactions execute within seconds mean more business for a reseller.  Resellers on a fast platform will have advantages over the competition on a slower platform.

• Check Domain Availability – Execution in seconds results in more domain searches; long execution times will result in customers leaving or never coming back to use your domain search again.
• Domain Registrations – Some registrar have parts of their system running in manual or batch mode, this means the actual registration may happen long afterward, putting a registration in jeopardy.  Registrations need to be completed within seconds and the respective WHOIS should be available immediately (registry dependent)
• Domain Modifications (such as WHOIS Uupdates, DNS Updates, …etc.) should get processed to the respective registry immediately, thus providing you immediate feedback if an update was successful or not.

Speed and execution of the reseller platform will effect how customers view a reseller.  The faster and more reliable the registrar platform the better a reseller looks to the buying public.  At HEXONET, not only do we pride ourselves on having real-time systems throughout our platform, but also for having some of the fastest domain checks and transactions anywhere.

4.) Comprehensive Registry Features

Features and functionality provided by the various registries are intended to assist in the registration and management of domains.  Given the importance of these features, strangely enough not every reseller platform makes these features available.  HEXONET prides itself on allowing for as many registry features in our solution.

• Autorenew feature, including allowing for an autorenew grace period (a defined period of time, which allows you to delete a domain in this period and still receive a refund)
• Multiyear registrations
• IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) capabilities – though many registries allow IDN registrations not many registrars support it.  IDNs are however on the horizon.
• Transfer capability via all methods – many registrars do not offer the full range of transfer capabilities for the respective TLDs they sell

5.) Integration Flexibility

Many registrar systems only offer one way to connect with them.  As it is with TLD selection, a wide variety of choice makes it easier for the reseller.  HEXONET for instance allows for six different ways for resellers to connect and register domains:

• Mailrobot
• SOAP
• XML/RPC
• HTTPS-API
• WebInterface or User Interface or Control Panel
• And as of recently possibly an EPP Gateway

6.) Future Proofing  Through Accreditation Management

A reseller many potential one day have enough domains of a particular TLD to consider becoming directly accredited with a respective registry.  Reseller platforms without a TLD management solution will create huge pains for the reseller at the point of separation or migration.  This pain is also evident if the TLD management solution only supports a small number of TLDs (typically gTLDs only).  Again, support for a wide variety of domains is key.

HEXONET has a decade of experience and expertise with gTLDs/ICANN and ccTLDs.  Accreditation migration and management has been made as simple as flicking on a switch.  Because of the wide selection of TLDs offered at HEXONET, all gTLDs and most ccTLDs accreditation can be quickly and easily migrated for a reseller.

7.) Updated Engineering – The DNSSEC Example

Some reseller platforms are stagnant.  Feature releases are slow or nonexistent.  New TLDs may rarely happen.  Resellers stuck on such platforms are losing out on both revenue and big profits.  Resellers should look for a platform that is growing and constantly improving.  A simple test, as of the fall of 2010, for your registrar’s engineering speed or willingness is to check if your registrar supports DNSSEC.

DNSSEC is a significant change to the way DNS is handled over the Internet.  If your registrar doesn’t have DNSSEC or doesn’t plan to support it, this might indicate engineering slowness.  To read more on DNSSEC and why your registrar should already be on top of this topic, please read the recent blog post “DNSSEC – Overview for Resellers“.

If you have any questions or need advice on reseller platforms please feel free to direct your questions to sales@hexonet.net.  HEXONET would be happy to provide more insight.

The Team @ HEXONET
At HEXONET, our team is immeasurably greater than the sum of our individual parts.  This can only happen when a team has a common vision and the passion to pursue it.  HEXONET’s employees strive everyday to empower resellers through world-class engineering and innovation, whether that’s going above and beyond to answer a support call or simply investing countless of hours testing to ensure our latest builds are rock solid.  This is who we are and how we work everyday.

Our passion is fueled by the commendations from our customers.  Emails, phone calls, and meetings where our customers not only give us praise, but also give us positive criticism provide guidance as to what we can do better and how we can innovate even more.  At HEXONET we welcome our clients and partners to share in our philosophy and work with us towards making things better.  This is how we grow.

And above all things, our team holds true to doing business the old fashion way – that promises are kept and our word is our honor.  At HEXONET, we would rather close our doors than lose the trust of our clients and partners.

Expertise of the Team @ HEXONET
There are HEXONET competitors who are way better at marketing than us, no doubt.  Also, there are some of competitors who also have top notch engineering like us.  And there are some who have been in business longer than us.   So how are we different?  At HEXONET we believe we have the right balance of skill and experience, that when combined properly, is vastly more superior than any one skill our competitors possess.

HEXONET’s foundation is world-class engineering, which is lead by some of the industry’s foremost technical talent.  Though technology serves as the foundation for the company, it is our business leaders who make what we do special.  Worldwide, there are only a handful of individuals who have both the high-level strategic acumen and the practical and practiced exposure in our industry to actually make things work correctly.

Altogether, HEXONET has more than thirty (30) years of experience in the domain and hosting industry, as executives, programmers and operational managers. We know the top-down strategy and most importantly the bottom-up mechanics for success.

The Technology – HEXONET eats, drinks and breathes Technology!
HEXONET technology is a reflection of a single philosophy heralded by its founder and CEO, Jens Wagner – automation is the key to success, and making automation faster and more stable only brings success that much sooner.  So how does HEXONET technology bring success faster to our customers?

The foundation of HEXONET technology is an ultra-fast, highly reliable, and scalable domain registration system that provides anyone who uses it the widest selection of domains from a single source (see the list).  Simply connect with the platform once and everything else is entirely automated.  Even if technology changes, new registries arise, old registries die, or new regulations becomes mandatory, HEXONET does all the hard work of automation for our customers!

Add to this amazing platform an abundance of ways to connect, whether it be via API, web control panel, EPP 1.0, or our newest way, Registrar Operations Center (RegistrarOC), moving from a decision to registering the first domain with us can literally be minutes.

Whether preparing for the impeding new gTLDs or looking for ways to save money without sacrificing performance, HEXONET technology even makes the decision to try totally risk-free.  Risk-free because anyone can start off as a reseller (no signup fees or commitments) and seamlessly switch to their own accreditation utilizing RegistrarOC when the volume makes sense.  In fact, switching requires no engineering, no effort to migrate domains onto one’s accreditation (fully automated and free of charge), and once done, saves customers even more money since afterward, domain registration and management only costs a small administrative fee per domain.

Talk with us, work with us, and see how our technology is easier to use, more reliable, and more cost effective!