Bye-bye Registerfly! ICANN decides to shut it down.

On Friday ICANN issued a formal notice -- effective March 31, 2007 -- terminating Registerfly's status as an ICANN accredited registrar. This means, assuming Registerfly does not successfully challenge the decreditation in court, it will no longer be allowed to register domain names or to display the ICANN logo after March 31. (NOTE: For details surrounding the fiasco that resulted in Registerfly's decredidation, please see my two prior articles.) To see the statement issued by ICANN relating to this action please click here.

Domain names must be unlocked.
ICANN directed Registerfly -- between now and March 31st -- to unlock all domain names and provide all necessary authorization codes to allow domains to be transferred to other registrars.

Registerfly needs to strike a deal.
ICANN also encouraged Registerfly - between now and March 31st -- to strike a deal with a registrar in good standing with ICANN and arrange for a bulk transfer of the remaining domain names. If Kevin Medina -- the shareholder in charge of Registerfly - does not strike such a deal before March 31, ICANN will step in and make the deal for him.

Go Daddy has been asked to help.
We have been approached by a number of Registerfly customers asking if we can help them in some way. The answer is YES!

A special transfer program for Registerfly customers.
Go Daddy is providing a special transfer program for Registerfly customers who want to move their domains over to Go Daddy. To take advantage of this special program, please click the following link: https://www.godaddy.com/registerfly

Very special transfer rates.
Go Daddy will be providing special low transfer rates to Registerfly customers who want to move their domain names. In many instances, when a transfer is requested it can only be done after the customer's account on Registerfly has been unlocked. This offer is also available to those Registerfly customers who did business with Registerfly when it was powered by eNom. These Registerfly customers have now by default become eNom customers.

Go Daddy will help customers who have their transfers denied.
Since Registerfly's servers may be largely inaccessible, most, if not all, transfer requests could be denied. Go Daddy will keep track of these transfer denials and will then petition ICANN and the registries on behalf of all customers who have had denied transfers. Eventually, we will get them approved.

Registerfly customers who transfer will retain whatever unexpired term they had in place with Registerfly, plus they will get an extra year added to the term of the registration after the transfer takes place.

An example.
For example: Assume a customer has a registration with Registerfly that has four (4) years and two (2) months left before it expires. If this customer transfers their registration over to Go Daddy, after the transfer successfully takes place, that customer will then have five (5) years and two (2) months before their domain name expires.

There's also a special deal for SSL certificates.
After I posted my initial article on the Registerfly crisis, I was asked to also provide a special deal for Registerfly customers who purchased SSL certificates from Registerfly. After looking at the issue, we decided to offer Registerfly SSL customers a special deal for Go Daddy's SSL certificates. We will be providing those Registerfly customers both discounted SSL rates and an extra year for our SSL certificates. To take advantage of this offer, please click here.

The number is 6,000 and climbing.
So far more than 6,000 Regsiterfly customers have taken advantage of our special offer and moved over to Go Daddy.

About Go Daddy.
Go Daddy is the world's largest domain name registrar. We are more than twice the size of our closest competitor. We earned this by providing great prices, an outstanding product offering and the world's best customer service - all of which is located in the USA. With a few minor exceptions, all of the technology we provide our customers was developed and is maintained right here at Go Daddy. That means when our customers have questions about any of the products they purchased from Go Daddy, they get to call one phone number that rings into the best customer service operation in the world. Our support departments are open 24 hours a day, everyday.

Until next time.