Gandi SAS (''Gestion et Attribution des Noms de Domaine sur Internet'' – "Management and Allocation of Domain Names on the Internet") is a French company providing domain name registration, web hosting, and related services. The company's main office is in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

History

Gandi was founded as a domain registrar in April 2000 by Valentin Lacambre, Laurent Chemla, Pierre Beyssac and David Nahmias. In 2005 following internal struggles in management, ownership and management of Gandi was sold to a team led by Stephan Ramoin (formerly of MultiMania/ Lycos), and investors Joe White, Eirik Pettersen (co-founders of the online website building service

Moonfruit Moonfruit was a UK-based company that offered a website building service. History Moonfruit was launched in January 2000 during the dot-com bubble, and was supported entirely by advertisements. When the bubble burst, it became a subscription-b ...

), and Warren Stephens. In 2008, Gandi launched a

Xen Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory an ...

-based VPS

cloud hosting Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multip ...

service, based on a system of "shares" and scalable resources that can be adjusted in real time. In 2010 the company created a subsidiary in the US, opening a data center in downtown

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...

and business offices in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, as well as creating a customer support center in the US, which until then had been exclusively operated out of Paris, France at Place de la Nation. In late 2011, Gandi.net was the 25th largest registrar in terms of the number of domains registered. On 31 July 2014, Amazon Web Services partnered with Gandi and announced the ability to register domains directly through their Route 53 Service. On 28 February 2019, Gandi CEO Stephan Ramoin announced that private equity firm Montefiore Investment had acquired the company.

Service

Domain registrar

Gandi is mostly known as a

domain name registrar A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registrar ...

Email services

Gandi is also known for its "Gandi mail" offering, which includes some productivity software and allows to use

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software Roundcube as

webmail Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Examples of webmail providers are 1&1 Ionos, AOL Mail, G ...

interface.

Business model

Gandi does not advertise, relying primarily on "word of mouth" recommendations from existing customers. Until 2019, the company didn't distribute profits nor take debts, but reinvested all its margins in the business. The company has a program to provide funds and/or promotion to projects and organizations that meet its criteria of "concrete", "open", and "alternative". It uses and advocates for

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software, and since September 2010 has supported

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

, providing them with free domain registrations and renewals, as well as VPS services. Other projects that Gandi supports include (but not limited to) the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

, Students for Free Culture, The Spamhaus Project,

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

Let's Encrypt Let's Encrypt is a non-profit certificate authority run by Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) that provides X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption at no charge. It is the world's largest certificate authority, used ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

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, Dotclear,

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, Paris Web,

World Wide Fund for Nature The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wor ...

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is a non-profit, marine conservation activism organization based in Friday Harbor, Washington, Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington, in the United States. Sea Shepherd employs direct action t ...

, VideoLAN, Adie, Canard PC,

International Federation for Human Rights The International Federation for Human Rights (french: Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for human rights organizations. Founded in 1922, FIDH is the third oldest international h ...

(FIDH),

Demotix Demotix was a photo agency that enabled freelance photojournalists to license their photos to mainstream media organisations, charities, and stock image buyers. Initially conceived as a free speech platform to allow local journalists to report t ...

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, Jamendo, In Libro Veritas, Arrêt sur Images le retour,

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, Geeklist,

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, Wikiotics, and

FluxBB PunBB (''PunBulletinBoard'') is a lightweight PHP-based internet discussion board system released under the GNU General Public License. The project's primary goal is to be a faster, smaller, and less graphic alternative to discussion boards such ...

References

{{WebManTools Blog hosting services Companies established in 2000 Domain name registrars Information technology companies of France Web hosting