Namecheap’s $1.5B deal shows why starting a domain registrar is still a killer internet business

CVC Capital Partners is buying a majority stake in Namecheap at a roughly $1.5 billion enterprise value. Founder-CEO Richard Kirkendall keeps a big stake and the top job. Namecheap did about $398 million in 2024 revenue, up 18%—and the company is still founder-led, bootstrapped and profitable by design. That’s a TechCrunch-grade headline for 2025—and a signal: registrar businesses are durable, cash-generative, and exit-worthy. 

  It also fits a larger roll-up story. Private equity snapped up Squarespace for $7.2 billion last year; CVC already owns WebPros (cPanel, Plesk, WHMCS), the software stack behind tens of millions of hosting accounts; Clearlake and Siris combined Endurance/Web.com into Newfold Digital and keep buying assets like MarkMonitor. Infra around domains keeps compounding. 

Why registrars make great companies

Renewals are the economic engine here, functioning much like an annuity: in .com/.net, the final renewal rate was 75.5% in Q1 2025, meaning most of last year’s book turns into this year’s cash with little incremental acquisition spend. 

Add-ons—DNS protection and DNSSEC, SSL certificates, email, privacy shields, hosting and site-builder bundles—push revenue per customer higher; GoDaddy, the sector’s bellwether, most recently highlighted ARPU of about $230 and rising. 

Switching is deliberately frictional. Inter-registrar transfers require an authorisation code and, following any change of registrant, ICANN mandates a 60-day lock; common EPP statuses such as clientTransferProhibited and registry-lock/DNSSEC workflows add further drag, which is prized by corporate buyers with compliance checklists. Customers don't switch registrars very often unless something goes wrong. Also if a domain is renewed for consecutive 3 years its likely the domain is going to be renewed forever by the registrant. 

Public and private market markers round out the picture. GoDaddy’s equity value sits near the $20bn mark, offering a liquid comp for cash-flow and multiple expectations, while CVC’s majority deal for Namecheap at roughly $1.5bn sets a fresh private benchmark. Together, durable renewals, priceable bundles and procedural stickiness explain why registrar economics still command mature-market valuations. 

Choose your registrar playbook

Retail registrar. 

High-volume SMB onboarding plus bundles (hosting, security, email) can throw off durable cash flow and PE-ready metrics; the upside is obvious when founders keep control while crystallising value. Namecheap just set the latest benchmark with CVC taking a majority at about $1.5B, with founder Richard Kirkendall retaining a significant stake—textbook proof of the model’s scalability and exitability. 

Wholesale / reseller registrar. 

API-first platforms that arm thousands of downstream resellers scale efficiently on usage and float, with upsell room across SSL, email and hosting. Directi proved the exit path when ResellerClub and LogicBoxes (plus sister assets) were sold to Endurance in 2014 for about $110 million. 

Corporate registrar. 

Enterprise books trade on high ARPU, SLAs, portfolio governance and enforcement—sticky relationships that strategic buyers prize. Clarivate’s divestiture of MarkMonitor to Newfold Digital for ~$302.5M is a clean comp for the “fewer domains, bigger contracts” play. 

Drop-catch specialist. 

This is an execution game: maximise registry request throughput at the exact drop window, often via fleets of accredited shells; upside comes from premium capture + auction fees. TurnCommerce’s DropCatch operates ~1,200 additional accreditations beyond its main registrar today—illustrating how scale materially improves catch rates and revenue. 

Aftermarket-integrated registrar. 

Acting like an exchange—instant transfer via a syndicated network—creates liquidity, take-rates and lock-in across the ecosystem. GoDaddy’s 2013 acquisition of Afternic (whose fast-transfer network spans 100+ registrars) is the canonical move that tied primary registration, secondary supply, and instant fulfilment together. 

Web3-first meets ICANN. 

Bridging on-chain identities with DNS-native distribution opens new channels and compliance-friendly product lines; the upside is access to both crypto-native users and mainstream search/email/browser rails. Unstoppable Domains becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar formalized that bridge and signalled investor-grade legitimacy for hybrid naming plays. 

Domainer-owned registrar. 

Professional investors run their own accreditation to optimize portfolio control, land rushes and aftermarket ops—capturing margin otherwise paid to third parties. TurnCommerce (parent of NameBright and HugeDomains) is the archetype, publicly positioning NameBright as an ICANN-accredited registrar while operating integrated aftermarket and drop-catch arms.

Accreditation is the unlock

Everything above starts with one gate: ICANN accreditation. It’s the license to connect directly to registries over EPP, hold customer sponsorships, and participate in programs (from drop-catch to fast-transfer) that third-parties can’t fully access. The maintained list of current accreditations is public, and it’s the first milestone on any registrar journey. 

Start. First pick a lane (retail, wholesale, corporate, drop-catch, hybrid). Apply for ICANN Accreditation to become a domain name registrar. Then do the unglamorous work: accreditation, data-escrow, billing and risk controls; it’s table stakes and it unlocks direct registry connections and margin you can’t get as a reseller. The good news is the tooling is industrial-grade—CVC’s WebPros (cPanel, Plesk, WHMCS) is the default stack behind tens of millions of hosting accounts—so you assemble rather than invent. 

Scale. Distribution is the whole ball game. Wholesale grows on channel partnerships; consumer plays lean on integrations (aftermarket, payments, site builders); enterprise needs SLAs and compliance muscle. Private equity has already marked the playbook: Permira took Squarespace private in a multi-billion deal, and Newfold keeps buying specialty assets like MarkMonitor to deepen cross-sell across domains, sites and commerce. 

Exit. There are fresh comps and old reliables. Namecheap just set a $1.5 billion benchmark with CVC taking a majority stake; Directi showed the platform path a decade earlier, selling ResellerClub/LogicBoxes et al. to Endurance for roughly $100–$110 million; and on the registry side, Colin Campbell’s .CLUB moved to GoDaddy Registry via contract reassignment—proof you can build and sell value on either layer of the DNS stack. 

The founder pattern: build in public, compound quietly

Start with the clearest precedent: Bhavin & Divyank Turakhia built Directi’s registrar rails (ResellerClub, LogicBoxes, BigRock) and sold those web-presence assets to Endurance International Group for ~$110m in 2014—a landmark registrar/platform exit that proved the playbook at scale. 

A few years later, Frank Schilling bundled registrar + marketplace + a large portfolio at Uniregistry and sold to GoDaddy (2020), showing how operator-led stacks trade cleanly to strategics. 

On the registry side, founders like Colin Campbell took .CLUB (with .design) into GoDaddy Registry; an SEC filing pegs the pair at ~$80m, alongside $120m for 28 MMX TLDs—handy markers for durable, mid-sized strings. 

And the consolidation drumbeat continues: Donuts–Rightside at $213m, Tucows–eNom at $83.5m, Web.com–Network Solutions at $405m, capped by CVC’s majority in Namecheap at ~$1.5bn—a fresh, founder-led comp for modern registrar economics. 

The takeaway

Focus. Make something simple and useful. Earn trust, one domain at a time. When customers renew, you don’t start from zero—you compound. Bundle the basics (security, email, hosting). Say no to everything that doesn’t help renewal, uptime, or support. Pick a lane. Get accredited. Ship. Learn. Repeat.

Do this with taste and discipline and the flywheel turns: renewals pay today, distribution opens tomorrow, optionality shows up when you’ve earned it. Then the market does what it always does—it notices. Namecheap at ~$1.5B is the proof, not the exception. Build it right, and the buyers come to you.