Recently domains.coop, the parent provider for all .coop domains announced that it would be discontinuing all hosting and email services. The messaging has resulted in a large number of requests from members and non-members alike requesting details on how to migrate to our services. While the standard membership at $100 per year does include a hosting account that can be used for standard hosting and email services we are not yet able to directly register the .coop domains on behalf of our members.
When we launched in 2013 we were pushing to provide the .coop domains to permit having the domain and hosting management in one place but reseller programs for the .coop domains were not available. While we did have the option to register .coop domains for our members the dilemma would be that they would be registered to the WebHosting.Coop directly and not the member which we wanted to avoid. We would have also been paying the same price that our members could acquire the .coop domains for first hand so we would have been registering each domain at a loss if we didn't add a surcharge to cover the transaction fees. As such we have offered most standard domain name types but we have deferred .coop registrations directly to domains.coop.
With the recent news it is important to note that domains.coop is NOT ending the domain registration services. If you require hosting or email services it would be possible to create a WebHosting.Coop membership, upload your site to our servers, create your email addresses one time, and then point existing .coop domains to our network with the details we provide in the welcome email for new accounts.
We are working once again to obtain a reseller agreement to offer .coop domains. We will post an additional notice if we are able to do so in a manner that would be beneficial for our members via domains.coop directly or another domain registrar.
Friday, May 1, 2020
