Knowledge Base

Donuts completes AWS migration, bringing the power of cloud computing to registry capabilities

Bellevue, WA [4.22.20] – Donuts Inc., the domain name registry with the world’s largest portfolio of new top-level domain names, has announced its migration of backend operations to the cloud. Donuts’ registry now operates on Amazon Web Services and is the first major registry backend operator to migrate an existing on-premises backend to the cloud.

Moving to the cloud has many strategic benefits for Donuts and its registrar partners. This transition will allow Donuts to scale platform capacity according to the growth of its registrations while leveraging the redundancy and resiliency of the AWS platform.  By leveraging the power of the cloud and AWS services, Donuts can expand its operational footprint in new geographies and deploy cloud services to efficiently process and analyze registry data for Donuts and its partners at a competitive cost structure. 

“Our teams have mastered new technologies through this migration process. With this cloud migration, Donuts is positioned to take on new growth and innovation initiatives with confidence, knowing that our team of engineers and data scientists are up to the challenge,” reported Donuts CEO, Akram Atallah. 

“We’ve fully automated the platform environment build-up, allowing us to set up a new registry platform in any geography with the push of a button,” says Benoit Levac, VP of Product and Engineering at Donuts. “This strengthens our position within the market as acquisition opportunities present themselves during this market consolidation.”

As one of the most innovative registries in the new gTLD era, Donuts is committed to maintaining the best platform and technology stack. Cloud enablement provides the scale and agility required to seize business opportunities ahead. Donuts plans to continue to optimize the new cloud platform to increase security, reliability, and adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape.

About Donuts Inc. 

Donuts simplifies and connects a fragmented online world with domain names and related technologies that allow people and businesses to build, market and own their digital identities. Donuts holds the world’s largest portfolio of new top-level domains and offers a wide variety of clear and meaningful names for use as business identifiers (such as .ltd, .company), navigation (such as .careers, .support), in vertical markets (such as .photography, .cafe,  or .builders) or in broad-based generics (such as .life, .world or .live). Donuts provides its registrar/reseller customers with innovative services for the discovery, registration, usage and monetization of high-quality domain names. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Donuts, the registrar Name.com is one of the most admired brands in the industry. In 2017, Donuts was named Number 1 in the Deloitte Fast 500. Donuts’ headquarters are in Bellevue, WA; it has offices in Denver, CO; Austin, TX; Washington, DC; Dublin, Ireland and Beijing, China.

About Amazon Web Services

For almost 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 69 Availability Zones (AZs) within 22 geographic regions, with announced plans for 16 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Africa, and Spain. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

Case Study

Relevant Name Search Delivers Results for WordPress.com

No matter the industry, retailers must focus on delivering the best customer experience possible. It’s simply good business for companies to find and utilize the right tools to attract, retain, and satisfy their customers to maximize lifetime value and ROI.

Matt Bamonte, Director of Business Development at Donuts Inc., spent some time with Kellie Peterson, Head of Domains at WordPress, to learn more about how using Donuts Relevant Name Search (RNS) globally has improved the domain name customer experience and business at WordPress.com.

MATT: How do domain names at WordPress.com contribute to the greater mission and business of the company? 

KELLIE: Domains are an integral part of the WordPress.com experience. Whether purchased explicitly or through a larger product plan, choosing a strong domain name has a significant impact on the overall stickiness & satisfaction for our WordPress.com customers. 

MATT: How does the overall search experience impact WordPress.com’s domain business and setting your customers up for success? 

KELLIE: Choosing the right domain name can be a struggle for any organization. Prior to the new gTLD program, the best option was often to add another keyword to find something that was available. Now, with hundreds of options for almost any search, it can be downright overwhelming. At WordPress.com we find that presenting a great mix of memorable, “brandable”, short and impactful domains is vital for customers to find the best name for their website.

MATT: You’ve selected Donuts RNS as your global search spinner. Why is RNS, and its features, a great fit for WordPress.com? 

KELLIE: Donuts RNS allows WordPress.com to concentrate on our core competencies while still giving customers a strong search experience. Customers who identify strongly with the domain they select are much more likely to renew a domain name even if their original purpose for it doesn’t pan out as expected. We want to make sure our customers LOVE the domain name they select and use.

MATT: How did your team make the decision to move forward with RNS as its global search spinner? 

KELLIE: Data, data, data. We spent months testing a number of third-party providers against each other as well as an internally built tool. RNS delivered what we needed – an increase in both domain registration and paid plan conversion rates – without having to continually invest in the ongoing development of something outside of our core product. We can put those resources to better work on other projects!

MATT: How should domain name search technology evolve in the future to deliver the most relevant domain names for your customers?

KELLIE: Using every cue that is available is incredibly important, but in today’s climate that also needs to be balanced against privacy concerns. Providing us with a variety of levers that we can use without having to disclose unnecessary information is ideal. Localization is another hot topic. We’re a truly global company and providing relevant suggestions in other languages is a big opportunity.