If you have any .co domains, particularly any that will need renewal in the next month, this news is for you. Big technical and operational changes are coming to the .co registry in a few days. Before then, we recommend that you take care of any upcoming renewals and lock in any new registrations you have planned.
New .co registry operator
The .co registry has been operated by GoDaddy for the last 15 years, but a new registry operator is about to take over. As Domain Name Wire has reported:
After 15 years, the rights to operate Colombia’s .co domain name extension is changing hands. The country has awarded a 10-year contract to manage the popular domain to Equipo PuntoCo, a newly formed joint venture between Team Internet (AIM: TIG, OTCQX: TIGXF) and CCI REG, a Colombian domain name registrar.
This is one of the biggest changes that a domain namespace can go through.
Our advice: Get October’s .co renewals and registrations done NOW
For any .co domains you hold with SiteHost, we have been a reseller, which puts an intermediary between us and the registry. It won’t be long before we are a .co registrar, but that’s a story for another day. For now we are depending on two things going well:
- A smooth transition from the old registry operator to the new one, which will let the entire namespace keep operating as it should.
- Our immediate supplier being ready to connect to the new registry operator.
Any changes of this magnitude are a difficult undertaking, and there is always the risk that something goes wrong. The change is coming at the end of this week—it’s been advertised for 3 October, which is likely to mean 4 October in New Zealand depending on when go-live decisions are made.
In any situation like this, we would advise that you organise your domains in advance. In this particular case, we haven’t received as much information as we would like about exactly what will be happening and when. In short, we can’t confidently say that everything is sure to go as well as possible. So our advice is:
Plan as if .CO systems will be unavailable from 3 October. Before Friday, make any renewals or registrations that you have planned for the entire month. That way you won’t get caught out if the worst happens.
Check domain renewal dates
You can see all your domains’ expiry dates by logging into SiteHost and opening your Domains screen.
To renew a domain, click the dots in the right-hand column of the table. In the menu this opens, you’ll see the Renew Domain option.
Hopefully this is overly cautious. But it is similar to the advice that we gave back in 2022, when InternetNZ upgraded the .nz registry system. Even when we knew more about what was happening and our supply chain was shorter, here’s what we suggested:
This registry replacement project is obviously a major undertaking. It’s not exactly unusual for big projects like this to introduce unexpected bugs or issues when they go live. That’s just the nature of tech. Our recommendation to bring forward any renewals is based on caution. We don’t want anyone to suffer downtime if the implementation happens to go badly. And even if it goes well, there’s no real downside to having added another year (or more) to your domains’ lifespans.
The same goes for .co domains today. Renewing a little earlier than usual is not a big price to pay for the knowledge that you’ve mitigated the risk of downtime.
Only ‘.co’ domains are affected
This is only for holders of .co domains. No other TLDs are affected, so there’s no need to worry about .co.nz or .com domains, for example.
See how to renew domains in the Knowledge Base, or log in now to get started. If there’s anything else you want to know, just ask.