Newsletter 2022 December – Openprovider

Welcome to the last Openprovider newsletter of the year! This month, we have introduced the new Sandbox environment for the API, as well as the feature to buy aftermarket domains from Afternic through our platform. And, as usual, we have gathered the latest blog posts and price changes in one place for you. Happy holidays!

New on our blog

Take a moment to read the latest articles that were published on our blog this month. Feel free to share them with your end customers, too!

8 internet security tips for fully remote companies

After sharing our lists of remote work tools and remote work best practices, we have now compiled our best tips about security for fully remote companies — a topic so important it deserves its very own article. When the entirety of your work environment is online, without any physical interaction or files, digital security is extremely important. In this article, we share 8 tips to keep your remote working environment safe.

Read the full article

Local SEO: a complete guide

Optimizing your local SEO results can seem like a daunting task for the uninitiated. Thankfully, it isn’t as difficult as you may think! There are just a few extra points to take into account on top of those regular SEO practices that you are familiar with. In this guide, we discuss everything you should pay attention to when it comes to local SEO.

Read the full article

Introduction to Openprovider's REST API

Openprovider’s REST API gives you access to the entire Openprovider infrastructure via a standardized interface based on OpenAPI principles. With the help of the API, you can do just about anything you can do in the Reseller Control Panel and integrate these features into your own website or interface.

Read the full article

Domain News

Upcoming price changes

1 January 2023:

.nl (registration, renewal, transfer)
.me (registration, renewal, transfer).
.eu (registration, renewal, transfer).
.za.com, .sa.com, .ru.com (registration, renewal, transfer).
.cricket, .accountant (registration, renewal, transfer).
.koeln, .cologne (registration, renewal).
.ws (renewal, transfer).
.pf (registration, renewal, transfer, owner change).
.berlin, .hamburg (registration, renewal).
.se, .nu (registration, renewal).
.si (registration, renewal).

12 January 2023:

.rent, .college, .baby, .security, .protection, .storage, .theatre, .tickets, .game, .mom, .lol, .flowers, .hosting, .audio, .pics, .diet, .christmas, .guitars (restore fee).

17 January 2023:

.info, .mobi, .pro (registration, renewal, transfer).

1 February 2023:

.net (registration, renewal, transfer).

15 February 2023

.help (registration, renewal, transfer)

.eus renewal price revision

From today on, the price for the renewal of .eus will be revised and will be brought down to 25 EUR for non-Members. We encourage you to take advantage of this lower price!

This is the season of .giving!

.giving, the newest TLD from PIR, has been in Landrush since 20th December 2022. General Availability will start on 20th January 2023 at 16:00 UTC! You can read more about this new extension here.

Reminder: .bank & .insurance Compliance Escalation Policy Update

A kind reminder to all our customers with .bank and .insurance domains in their portfolio. Starting next year, registry, fTLD will apply their new Registrant Domain Name Compliance Escalation and Suspension Policy.

The policy can be viewed here. For more detailed information, please refer to this FAQ from the registry.

fTLD will begin sending compliance escalation notifications in January 2023 for compliance findings that are not resolved within a period of 30 days and 60 days.

Please note that these escalation notices will be sent to the domain owner (registrant), the verification contact of the respective .bank / .insurance domain, and to the registrar of the record.

Compliance findings that are not resolved within 60 days as specified in the policy will be suspended (i.e., placed on Registrar clientHold or Registry severHold), resulting in the deactivation of the .bank/.insurance domain's website and email.

Important: fTLD will explicitly inform registrants of the new Policy's implementation date.

Price increase + special discount for .nl

Due to the current inflation, SIDN (.nl registry) has announced a larger price increase for 2023 compared to other years. The new Member price for .nl registrations will be €3.76, while the new non-Member price will be €4.50. This price increase is set to take effect on 1 January 2023.

At Openprovider, we want you to be able to grow your portfolio, in spite of the inflation. SIDN is currently applying different volume discounts, which we want to pass onto all Members. This year, Members therefore get to benefit from a special discount on .nl domain names, depending on the size of their Membership plan. These special discounts will start taking effect on 1 January 2023 as well.

The larger your Membership plan, the larger the discount you will enjoy. You can benefit from a discount up to 8%. You can consult the overview of prices and discounts here. You will be refunded the price difference every quarter.

These prices and discounts will take effect on 1 January 2023. Right now, we recommend you to take advantage of the current, lower prices by registering your new .nl domains and renewing your existing ones before the price increase is set to take effect.

Price increase for Plesk

Plesk has also announced a new price increase for their licenses of around 22%. You can find all new prices for Plesk in this document. These prices will be effective starting on 1 January 2023.

What's new?

The new Sandbox environment is finally available

There is a new Sandbox environment available for our API. The Sandbox environment can be used to test our REST API. It’s a safe and easy way to familiarize yourself with its functionalities before moving your integration to production.

Using the Sandbox, you can try various operations, including domain search, registration, listing the most recent transactions or creating a new contact handle.

This testing platform is replacing the previous CTE (customer testing environment). You can find more details in this Knowledge Base article.

Buy aftermarket domains from Afternic through Openprovider

We recently launched a new feature to buy domains from the SEDO Aftermarket platform. We already mentioned before that we would be adding more platforms for this soon - so this week, we are proud to announce that you can now also buy aftermarket domains from Afternic through Openprovider.

Afternic is one of the biggest Aftermarket platforms, where anyone can list their domain for sale. Now you can buy domains listed on Afternic directly from the Openprovider platform, through the control panel, the API and our website.

You can search for any domain name listed in SEDO or Afternic with a fixed price (no auctions) while specifying the TLD, and buy like a normal domain purchase. After your purchase, the new domain will be transferred to your Openprovider account. Simple and easy!

You can find more details in this Knowledge Base article.