Record 21,756 .si domains registered in one day

Neoserv, a domain provider, has sent customers a new message about the rush on the Slovenian .si domain, this time with numbers. According to its data, 21,756 domains were registered in a single day on 5 October, and more than 108,000 in the first week of October.

"On 5 October, as many as 21,756 domains with the .SI ending were registered in a single day." (translated)

For comparison, Neoserv says 3,515 .si domains were registered in August and 46,066 in September. So the first week of October saw more than 30 times as many registrations as all of August. The September figure is also confirmed by Register.si, the .si registry, which publishes it on its front page.

When we checked on 13 October, the registry counter showed 398,716 .si domains, 6,720 of them in the last 24 hours. The foreign portal DNS Robot estimated the number of domains at the start of September at around 190,000, so it has more than doubled. The daily rush has, however, fallen from the record 21,756 to just under a third of that, although the registry's measurement period differs from Neoserv's.

One number does not add up. According to the registry counter, there were 241,459 domains on 1 October and 330,073 on 7 October, a difference of about 88,600. For the first week of October, Neoserv cites more than 108,000. We cannot explain the gap; Neoserv should.

Why does this matter? The registry charges registrars such as Neoserv €10 for each domain. If we multiply Neoserv's 108,000 by ten, we get around €1.08 million in one week. That is our own calculation and holds only if these are one-year registrations and registrars do not get them refunded: the registry refunds the cost if a domain is not activated within 16 days. The US site Domain Name Wire estimated around €300,000 in additional registry revenue for September.

Register.si rejected speculation that Slovenia has earned millions. The registry operates under Arnes, a public institute, and we do not know its running costs, so we do not know how much of those ten euros actually remains.

Who is buying the domains? According to data from the company Netcraft, cited by CircleID, roughly 52 percent of the .si domains registered with the registrar Dynadot between 19 and 22 September were soon offered for sale. Domain Name Wire also found little evidence that companies were using the domains for their own web presence, and more signs that investors are buying them to resell.

Neoserv's message ends with an instruction: anyone who does not yet have a .si domain should check and register one before someone else takes it. The sender sells domains, so its numbers are most credible where the registry confirms them: 46,066 registrations for September and 398,716 domains in total.