.PRO domains now widely open for registration
A long-awaited notification has sparked enthusiasm on the global domain scene recently. .PRO – the premium namespace for professionals, is no longer restricted to certain groups and burdened with a ton of verification work.
The registration curtain around .PRO has been lifted and now everyone with a professional cause can have their domain registered quickly and easily.
You can now ride the hottest wave on the domain market and start offering .PRO domains to a much wider audience and at a much lower price.
Why was .PRO restricted?
When the .PRO TLD was launched 13 years ago by RegistryPro, it was meant to represent certified professionals only.
The registration itself was tied to a long verification procedure where registrants were required to legitimate their occupancy by showing compliance with a long list of eligibility criteria, including professional status, government certification and good standing.
The presented registration information was then verified by the registry. This was a time-consuming process that caused registrants inconvenience.
And above all, it was not open to all professionals globally, but instead only to lawyers, accountants, physicians and engineers in France, Canada, Germany, the UK and the USA.
Professionals from a wide range of fields, including policemen, firefighters, journalists, programmers, artists, writers and many others, were left off the list of eligible .PRO registrants.
How were the rules of the game changed?
Due to the restricted procedure, registration numbers started dwindling over the years.
This lead to a strategic move on a registry level. RegistryPro was acquired by Afilias Limited – the registry behind .INFO and .MOBI.
This resulted in a new deal with ICANN, which liberated the TLD of all the restrictions that RegistryPro originally agreed to 13 years ago.
Who can now register .PRO domains?
Thanks to the newly loosened registry regulations, .PRO domains are now open for registration to practically everyone.
Regardless of their certificates, all registrants can apply for a .PRO domain name.
The procedure is short and quick, with no credentials to submit and no extra verification steps to go through.
The registration details stay the same. Registrants can reserve .PRO domains for a period of 1-10 years and can make modifications to the Whois information, whenever needed.
As per the registry’s official rule, .PRO domain names cannot be transferred between registrars and do not support a Whois protection service.
New prices for .PRO domains
Along with the newly relieved registration procedure, we are also introducing a new, much lower price for the TLD to give you a double incentive to go ahead and start promoting the extension to your target audience of professionals.
We’ve already reset the price for the .PRO extension on your behalf, so you can now fine-tune it to reflect the new price change from the Domain Pricing section of the Reseller Control Panel.
Tags: Domain Names, domain extensions, domain reseller, domain pricing