A Japanese domain registrar has driven significant growth in .xyz domain registrations over the past twelve months.
Depending on the month, .xyz ranks either first or second in terms of total domains under management for new top level domain names. There were 4.8 million .xyz domains registered as of the end of March, the most recent date for which official data is available. This is up from 3.7 million one year before. And if nTLDStats‘ data is correct, there are over 5.4 million .xzy domains registered as of today.
It’s interesting to peel back the onion a bit to see where these domain registrations are taking place.
As of March, these are the top domain registrars for total .xyz domains registered:
- GMO/Onamae 827,035
- Namecheap 801,694
- GoDaddy 694,531
- Dynadot 397,927
- NameSilo 276,856
- Alibaba 248,882
- Spaceship 129,564
- Gname 120,943
- Hostinger 102,869
- Name .com 102,548
Here is how many new .xyz domains were registered at these registrars in March alone (I’ve kept the ranks/list order according to total .xyz domains under management):
- GMO/Onamae 190,363
- Namecheap 48,043
- GoDaddy 38,492
- Dynadot 16,491
- NameSilo 13,856
- Alibaba 20,080
- Spaceship 16,239
- Gname 4,364
- Hostinger 4,591
- Name .com 3,630
For each of these registrars, I have listed their different brands/sites separately, e.g., Namecheap and Spaceship. Different registrar brands market domains differently and at various price points, even if they have common ownership.
It’s interesting to see how these registrars market .xyz domains, and how the biggest registrar is an outlier.
GMO/Onamae is a Japanese domain registrar. It offers .xyz domains for free for the first year, with a limit of one per customer. This is not unique to .xyz; it even offers legacy domains, including .com and .net, for free for the first year.
One hundred percent of .xyz registrations at Onamae are for a one-year term. The registrar doesn’t seem to let customers register .xyz domains for more than a year.
While both Namecheap and GoDaddy have multi-year .xyz registrations each month, single-year registrations still account for over 98% of .xyz registrations at these registrars. For comparison, for .com, 87% of Namecheap’s registrations are one year, whereas at GoDaddy, they are just 73% (perhaps because it defaults to multiple years at checkout).
Onamae hasn’t always accounted for so many new .xyz registrations. In March 2024, it had just 12,086 new .xyz registrations and a total base of 234,121. It has grown its .xyz domains under management by 2.5x during the past year.
Xyz’s strategy is to offer inexpensive first-year registrations. Most registrars on the list currently charge about $2 for the first year.
This strategy is employed by all new top level domains that have at least one million registrations. Still, certain registrars clearly push one domain over another, or attract bulk registrants.
For example, the largest .top registrar is NameSilo, the largest .shop registrar is Namecheap, and the largest .online registrar is GoDaddy.
The large number of .xyz registrations, especially at registrars like Onamae, highlights how pricing strategies and registrar marketing can significantly influence new TLD adoption.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
