Namecheap is an

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

-accredited

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) Domain name registry, registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) ...

providing

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

registration and

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

based in

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 ...

, US. Namecheap is a budget hosting provider with 11 million registered users and 10 million domains.

History

Namecheap was founded by Richard Kirkendall in 2000. In March 2013, Namecheap started to accept

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

as a payment method.

Advocacy

ICANN price caps decision

In July 2019, Namecheap was one of the organizations that filed a reconsideration request to ICANN asking for a review of the decision to remove price caps on .org and .info TLDs. As of September 2019, ICANN has ignored such requests.

Termination of service to Russian accounts

In February 2022, Namecheap announced that they would terminate services to Russian accounts due to the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

, citing "war crimes and human rights violations". Existing users were given a one-week grace period to move their domains. The company also announced that it would be offering free anonymous domain registration and web hosting to all protest and anti-war websites in Russia or Belarus. Namecheap at the same time said it had over 1,000 employees located in Ukraine, comprising most of its support staff, mostly in Kharkiv (which was a major location of fighting).

References

External links

* {{WebManTools Internet properties established in 2000 Companies based in Los Angeles Domain name registrars Web hosting