Big jump in Irish domain registrations helps boost IEDR profits

The company responsible for managing Ireland’s country domain name moved into the black last year as turnover rose on the back of a record number of new .ie registrations.

IE Domain Registry (IEDR) recorded pretax profits of €277,228 for 2017, as against a €103,331 loss a year earlier as turnover rose 3 per cent to €3.12 million.

The rise in turnover came as a record 39,523 new .ie domains were registered, an increase of 14 per cent on the previous year.

The total number of registered .ie domains at the end of 2017 was 237,412, with every province in Ireland recording significant increases in new registrations.

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The rise in registrations came as IEDR took steps to liberalise the domain process by dropping the need for applicants to prove a valid claim to a name from March 2018 onwards.

IEDR said new registrations for the first four months of this year were up 50 per cent on the same period a year earlier, to 20,284.

“More than half of this growth represents registrations of .ie domains by new customers, indicating the success of the policy in transforming the customer experience, making it easier and faster than before,” the company said.

Net liquid funds and investments at IEDR totalled €6.6 million at the end of last year, an increase of €320,000 on 2016.