Domain Registrars

Spaceship announced a big milestone this morning. The registrar now has more than 5 million domain names under management (DUM). This metric is used to compare the size of a domain registrar, and it can also be used to show growth. In fact, the company highlighted that it only took two months to go from 4 to 5 million DUM:

5 million domains, infinite futures: all in perfect harmony.

Spaceship’s evolving faster, because your trust is behind it.

Ideas, visions, progress – you’ve made it possible.

Let’s continue to grow, side by side💙

P.S. It took less than two months to grow from 4 to 5… pic.twitter.com/KhbBCkDTd2

— Spaceship (@spaceship) October 21, 2025

NameBright is currently running a promotion for new .com registrations. The price is $6.29/year for pre-funded accounts and $6.59 for credit card payments, which is what I chose. Like many other domain registrars, NameBright offers free domain privacy on all .com registrations.

There is no promo / discount code required to take advantage of the discount, and it does not look like there are any limits to the number of domain names that can be registered. This promotion only applies to new registrations and not transfers or renewals.

I am unsure when this promotion ends.

One benefit of consolidating a portfolio of domain names at a single registrar is receiving better bulk pricing for domain name registration, renewals, and inbound transfers. Most domain registrars offer these deals to their larger customers, with the priority pricing tiered – typically based on spend (varies by registrar).

Like many registrars targeting domain investors, Dynadot offered special pricing to some of its top customers. This special pricing has been extended to all Dynadot customers, per a post on X from Dynadot Founder and CEO Todd Han:

This morning, Namecheap and Spaceship Founder and CEO Richard Kirkendall announced a free Whois history tool that is available on Spaceship.com. Users don’t need to be logged into their Spaceship account – or even Spaceship customers – to access this free tool.

Richard shared a video demonstration of how it works in a post via X:

In a press release distributed this morning, Porkbun announced it hit the 2 million domain names under management milestone. The registrar was established in 2015, and it hit the 1 million mark seven years later in 2022. It is an impressive feat to have doubled that number in about two years.

Notably, Porkbun was founded as a retail registrar focused on selling non-.com domain names in extensions owned by its parent company, Top Level Design. The press release shared some of this background for those unfamiliar with Porkbun’s history:

Earlier this morning, Richard Kirkendall shared that Spaceship hit the 1 million Domains Under Management (DUM) mark. Richard is the Founder of Namecheap and its sister registrar, Spaceship, which came out of beta just over a year ago:

We’ve just surpassed 1 million domains under management at @spaceship! We launched in open beta just about 14 months ago. I believe it took us about 5 years to reach this milestone at Namecheap. Big thanks from all us to all of you, our customers that have chosen us and trusted… pic.twitter.com/21hhsPSH5J

— Richard Kirkendall (@NamecheapCEO) June 12, 2024

Following Richard’s comments, the Spaceship PR team shared some data about the domain names registered via its platform. Some of the data was surprising to me. Here are some of the facts that caused me to do a double take.