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Namecheap bought for $1.5bn
Free link to article above.
NameCheap bought for $1.5bn... Namecheap doesn’t disclose financials. Kirkendall has said that revenue rose 18% in 2024, to $398 million.
Does that mean the end of coupon codes and occasionally competitive pricing? Where will they try to squeeze additional money out of clients? I actually did use them for a few domains that I didn't want to host at some other registrars. I guess it's time to move them...
Comments
Well of course they want to milk it, such buyout needs to bring return to the shareholders.
Moved thread from General to News
Nice exit. Now what will happen is:
Just move domains elsewhere and forget.
Wonder if this will affect Spaceship since it's a Namecheap company.
Time to move from NameCheap/Spaceship?
Sad news. Good for the founders but I won't expect the service/product level to stay the same...
Does this include spaceship or not?
yes.
Spaceship.com is a Namecheap initiative and not a separate entity; both registrations are under the same company management.
The buyer also owns Webpros (cPanel)
Price for cPanel is growing like crazy.
They just can’t get enough money.
Probably domains will be next too.
That's too bad. Really like Namecheap for domains, have used them for many years. Recently, I like Spaceship even better with it's great API to administer DNS records. Now both companies will start a steep decline.
not that it matters at their scale, but this is honestly just what @Francisco could dream of business wise, namecheap/spaceship probably most used registrar on LET, if CVC proceeds with enshittification which I think is a given... people now have a reason to move
It seems likely that prices may increase, but my main concern is the risk of losing access to domains, data, or Whois information during the merger.
In the worst case, errors during the transition could result in domains ending up in the wrong account or similar administrative issues.... these scenarios would have more serious consequences for me than a price hike.
I am seriously debating whether to transfer my domains out until after the merger, and then possibly return depending on how things turn out.
this would really surprise me, even if they're going to change platforms etc that'll likely be in a good while
This is certainly a nice revenue multiplier, considering the industry.
We hope prices don't go up.
Why won't registrars have a service like they charge more like +50 USD for proper support for topics you can't do it yourself(DMCA notices, court orders , trademark stuff, etc) so your important domain is properly protected.
Honestly, they never had any good products except domains (excellent panel + low prices + instant support).
Hosting, vps are mediocre, not competitive.
They resell ssl for cheap, but now no need, even wikipedia uses letsencrypt.
Expect the domain portfolio; they do not have much.
Ou, there is! So called “ultra premium” providers. Enom.com , one.com , name.com , cscdbs.com
Yes. Move it the faster you can. For sure they will try to make things more harder and not cheapest to recover from the investment they made.
Also pretty sure that the quality AND PRIVACY won’t be the same as before. They will takedown more domains, they will force KYC. Just like any GoDaddy and HostGator company.
Don’t expect a good service at all. But who knows? Time to move.
lol as someone said, without russian money couldn't last even a couple of years
dangerous registrar though, closed people accs for politics.
name-com / dyna / silo / GD did not
last year, russians pushed GoDaddy out of maket by themself.
but GoDaddy didn't do such nasty things as NameCheap
but if they add Free cPanel to their VPS, then could be good offer.
This is actually not the case. As far as I understand, Spaceship is not included in the deal.
Just need another alternative registrar. May be LET should have one for that in this upcoming BF..
Just cloudflare and be done with that
Cloudflare is nice but being nameservers locked-in.. that's hard.
If that's true, there is light.
They easily terminate accounts for politics, so only for non-critical domains.
imho name-com the option now, then dyna, then pork, then silo, then internetbs, then GD
The WSJ journo does not mention Spaceship, so there is no reason to think that it is included. Spaceship is a separate entity.
The question is: who owns that separate entity? Namecheap or the owners of Namecheap?
There's a distinction between a separate brand and a separate legal entity.
Spaceship is a separate brand/platform launched by Namecheap, but it's not a separate legal entity.
Namecheap owns the Spaceship trademarks and the platform itself. When companies acquire other companies, they typically acquire all owned brands and trademarks unless specifically carved out. The WSJ not mentioning every subsidiary brand doesn't indicate exclusion.
That would make acquisition articles impossibly long.
Unless there's specific documentation showing Spaceship was carved out of the deal, the default assumption would be that Namecheap's owned assets are included in the acquisition.
I could also be wrong about this, but unless there's specific documentation showing Spaceship was carved out... I don't know...
Exactly, but from public sources it's not that easy to find out if e.g. RK (and others?) founded spaceship as a separate entity or through Namecheap (e.g. see competing trademarks etc). The former would be clever (next gen dom platform as spaceship continued and sell the old namecheap steward) but so far I have no clue on if Spaceship is owned by Namecheap or just has Namecheaps CEO involved (but always thought that e.g. support is the same team, even with wearing a different t-shirt)