Are Registrars Reinventing Themselves — With Hosting As the Next Step?

The internet’s fun uncle of domain registrars just hit a milestone. Porkbun — known for its self-aware quirky branding — has now sold more than 3 million domains. It’s a big deal for a young provider in a cutthroat and saturated market.

And it’s not stopping at domains. Porkbun has been expanding on its hosting, automation, and AI-driven tools for good measure. And yet, these moves aren’t exactly unique to Porkbun.

GoDaddy and Namecheap paved the way years ago as the main names that moved from domain-only to include web hosting; smaller names like Hover and Name.com have released their own managed WordPress, email, and site builders. Even Squarespace got into the domain business with its 2023 Google Domains acquisition.

This hasn’t come out of left field. Take a look at the numbers themselves. The domain market is valued at around $1.24 billion. But hosting is an entirely different beast. Its market is worth $14.27 billion in the same timeframe.

What we’re looking at here are two industries growing at the same rate, but only one leaves real room to grow.

New TLDs (top level domains) have exploded in recent years. Porkbun confirmed that most tech startups love creative TLDs, from .ai and .space to .studio and .xyz. eCommerce brands meanwhile are buying ones like .shop, .beauty, and .store. And yet, most people still like to stick with what they know.

“As they say, .com is king,” Andrew Merriam, COO at Porkbun, told HostingAdvice. “It’s by far the largest domain extension in the world. The main driver seems to be trust, real or perceived, in domains that feel familiar.”

Unfortunately, that trust comes with limits. Even if a registrar sells a few hundred domains, renewals are never guaranteed — and even if they are, that’s somewhere between $10 and $20 per renewal. Some buyers register for years at a time and don’t come back.

So registrars started bundling.

“Registrars bundle services because domains don’t make money. We were able to be the world’s scrappiest, and eventually best, domain registrar for years so we don’t need the inflated margins the big registrars charge. We sell domains at cost,” Merriam explained.

Most hosts can see where things are heading. The registrar-to-host model isn’t a fad but a new way of sustainability.

Plus, consumers keep saying the same thing: These days, they’d rather manage everything under one roof. One survey says two-thirds of U.S. consumers would be happy to switch to a single bundled provider.

Porkbun never looked or sounded like everyone else. It built its entire reputation on humor and an impressive amount of self-awareness.

“If Porkbun can teach us anything, it’s that a memorable name goes a long way. With that said, you are making your work tougher for you if your name is disconnected from the service that you offer. It’s a challenge we were willing to accept in order to build a fun brand but it’s not for everyone,” Merriam told us.

It says a lot about Porkbun’s confidence. Even early on, it offered things most registrars hid behind paywalls — things like WHOIS privacy and SSL certificates.

“Our industry doesn’t have a good reputation. You have endless pages of upsells, and there is always a chance to add another product on. Some make sense, others don’t,” Merriam added. “[But] our reputation for low prices and transparency has attracted a loyal base of tech enthusiasts in areas like domain investing, digital independence, and home labs.”

The domain foundation is what has helped Porkbun find growth in its first decade, adding everything from Cloud WordPress to link-in-bio hosting.

And soon coming is a “Do It For Me” professional-services division, reserved for the customers who want someone else to handle setup and design.

“All the technical people who understand registrars, hosting, and options for building websites have been coming to us for domains for years,” Merriam said. “But as our mass-market awareness grows, and the awards pile up, we are adding more and more ways to get people online.”