Domains.coop terminating email and hosting services

Apologies if this has already been posted but may affect your own clients, or be an opportunity for a quick response to pick up new ones.

Upcoming Termination of Email and Hosting Services from the registrar Domains.coop

We have recently been informed by our service provider that, as of 1st May 2020, all Email and Hosting products, including website builders, are to be discontinued and will cease to function as of this date. This includes all free email addresses offered with domain registrations. We are sincerely sorry for this abrupt change and are ready immediately to assist with the transition of those services to the best-suited registrar within our global network of domain registrars.

You can refer to the notification we put on our website last week for more information:

https://domains.coop/support/

Before this date (1st May 2020) you will need to source new Hosting, Sitebuilder and Email providers to replace the existing service. We are ready to assist you during this transition. We have listed (below) other providers of the email and hosting services, from your geographical region, who you may wish to transition to…

UK: - https://www.blacknight.com/

Transferring .COOP domains

We appreciate it is more ideal for you to manage your web services under one platform, however please note it is very common for websites to have separate domain registrars and hosting providers. If you are keen to keep all your services under one roof, then you can also look at alternative .COOP accredited registrars on the below registry URL with whom you could transfer your domain name to as well as utilise their Email and Hosting solutions:

https://identity.coop/buy/

Pro-rata Refunds

We are happy to offer all clients using paid services pro-rata refunds for this abrupt termination of service. Please contact our support team to request a refund or a credit which can be applied as a discount to your next domain registration renewal.

We are sincerely sorry for this inconvenience, however we hope you can appreciate that we have tried to help you find new solutions by recommending these alternative providers. If you have any queries about this product termination, please contact our support team on support@domains.coop or via the support tab of your customer control panel.

Kind regards,

Domains.coop

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We’d be happy to assist any clients needing to move across. Have to say, I’m disappointed that they haven’t recommended other cooperatives.

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Thanks for posting that @athertonjohn, I hadn’t see it.

Webarchitects would also be happy to host websites and email from people migrating off their service.

We migrated the Malvern Book Cooperative WordPress site from their service the other week and it is worth noting that this wasn’t a hosting service actually run by domains.coop, they were just a reseller of a (seemingly poor) service from a 3rd party in the USA — the MySQL database server was down for a whole weekend for the Malvern Book Cooperative just before we migrated their site.

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Yes, very odd/ strange that they are randomly recommending a private Irish company rather than a UK co-op. Bonkers. And, yes, very disappointing.

I’ve emailed them to offer to put together a list of coops that could take that on. Why don’t we do that “officially” as CoTech? Sure that would get traction (given that domains.coop is owned by ICA).

So that would be: Webarchitects, MediaBlazeHosts, PhoneCoop, who else?

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Good idea Shaun and thanks a lot for taking this on :+1:.

We could suggest that the same could be done for other countries via the ICA Tech-Coop’s forum?

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Do that, we are probably going to be emailing with them the same point and also put something up on our website as where to go for advice and hosting services. but will let you know.

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OK have I missed anybody in UK?

I have to say that I am extremely disappointed that the cooperative organisations behind domains.coop appear to have utterly failed to support co-operative hosting providers with this announcement. It is shambolic.

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What I fail to understand with this announcement is why - rather than actually seek to make an effective arrangement with a UK tech co-op that could actually provide the services and thereby enable domains.coop to continue to be of some value to the movement, it has instead chosen to stop offering any service other than simply registration and - presumably DNS hosting. Have they totally lost the plot? Facepalm

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Indeed, disappointing. But not surprising. The commercial dynamics of the domains industry rather than those of the coop sector have, perforce, always dominated the .coop domain strategy: Without mass adoption by coops it’s a very niche domain, barely sustainable and not attractive to larger ISPs. This also, to a degree, explains the high cost - there has to be margin for them to take it on. chicken/egg scenario sadly.

Good call Shaun BTW - I know we’ll be looking for a new host

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I guess it depends, if it was to be a list of CoTech co-ops who offer web hosting there is the list here:

And for email hosting:

However note that GreenNet isn’t a co-op yet (are they almost there?) and also note that, as far as I’m aware, the only co-ops that are geared up for the fast provisioning of things like affordable Email and WordPress hosting (which I guess most of the people on the domains.coop infrastructure are using) are these ones:

https://www.coops.tech/co-op/netuxo

If you want to include CoTech non-coop members add:

https://www.coops.tech/co-op/greennet

And if you want to include co-ops that are not CoTech members potentially add software.coop.

Do thephone.coop offer hosting (other than for existing clients) still? I can’t find it on their web site…

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The last I heard, phone coop were no longer offering hosting to new clients and managing their existing clients only. However I could be wrong.

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I think your list of 4 makes sense @chris

Anyone from the others listed object if I just list those four?

GreenNet still is trust-owned I believe but it is a member of CoTech so I think that works.

@liam will check with Phone Coop

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Just waiting to hear back from The Phone Coop

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I have started a thread about this on the ICA Discourse forum:

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I think the Phone Coop not really up for this so I will go with the current list.

@liam - you’re not offering email accounts - correct?

Who is?

Shaun

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I thought @liam was using CPanel or Plesk so his hosting will come with email? But I could be wrong…

Netuxo are using ISPConfig so they should be able to offer email, as far as I’m aware, but again I could be wrong…

I’m not sure what GreenNet are using, perhaps ISPConfig as well? @edmaw?

We offer email hosting on a Mailcow server.

I have also sent Finn a email based on the suggestion from Tom here:

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Here’s what I got back from domains.coop:

Happy for you to send me the names of some organisations, however the reason why we recommended Blacknight is because they also retail .COOP domains, and some people would prefer to manage all of their services under one control panel.

Please feel free to send me the names of some organisations and I will propose these if anyone from the UK is keen to remain local, although Ireland is on the same timezone which is the main concern when receiving support.

Does no one sell .coop domains? We (CBN) sort of do.

Long shot here but isn’t this an opportunity to put something cooperative together?

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Phone Coop says thanks but not really ready. So, who sells .coop apart from me?