Domain names
A domain name is simple — until the day it expires, until a DNS record is set wrongly, until nobody remembers who holds the account. D&D administers several hundred domains for its clients: it is an activity in its own right, not a sideline.
What we take care of
Registration
Registering new domains: `.ch`, `.swiss`, generic extensions and most country-code extensions.
Renewal
Tracking expiry dates and renewing. A domain that lapses through oversight is an avoidable outage, and often an expensive one to repair.
Transfer
Taking over domains already registered elsewhere, including when the starting situation is unclear.
DNS management
A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, SPF, DKIM, DMARC records and the rest. We set them, and we fix them.
Portfolio management
For organisations holding dozens of domains: inventory, consistency of registrants, expiry dates, defensive registrations.
Support
Someone who looks at the DNS zone with you, rather than a knowledge base.
Joined up with your services
Domain, email and hosting handled by the same team: fewer round trips, fewer configuration mistakes.
Clear ownership
The domain is registered in your organisation’s name. You remain the registrant.
Why this deserves a real point of contact
The incidents we see most often are not technical. It is a domain registered twelve years ago by a provider that no longer exists. It is a contact address pointing to a former employee, so that renewal notices are read by nobody. It is an MX record changed during a website rebuild, and email going down.
Taking over a disordered portfolio, tracking down registrants, putting expiry dates back in order and setting DNS records correctly is part of what we do regularly.
And when a domain is tied to email and hosting that we also operate, coordination happens without an intermediary: the record change and the service cutover are done by the same people, at the same moment.
Our position in the chain
D&D is a member of CORE and operates as a reseller within the corresponding registrar chain.
One point of honesty: the domain name registration chain is not, taken as a whole, a Swiss chain. It necessarily involves the registry for each extension, along with the infrastructure required for those extensions. We therefore do not present domain names as an argument about data location.
What has value for you here is something else: the experience of managing several hundred domains, the tracking of expiry dates, control over DNS records, and someone who answers.
Pricing
Price depends on the extension and the volume.
The price of a domain depends on its extension and on the terms of the corresponding registry. For larger portfolios, management is contracted as a whole. Send us the domains concerned and we will come back to you.
Frequently asked questions
Can I transfer domains registered elsewhere to you?
Yes, and it is a common request. We need the transfer code for each domain and the registrant’s agreement.
If you have lost access to the original account, or no longer know who holds the domain, tell us: that is a frequent situation and there is usually a way out of it.
Who is the registrant of the domain?
Your organisation. We manage the domain for you, but it belongs to you. We are strict on this point, including when a domain is registered at an integrator’s request on behalf of their client.
Do you manage DNS even if the hosting is elsewhere?
Yes. DNS management does not require the website or the email to be hosted with us.
What happens as the expiry date approaches?
Expiry dates are tracked and renewal is handled. That is precisely the kind of oversight that entrusting your domains to a provider is meant to prevent.
Are domain names “Swiss”?
The registration chain for a domain name involves the registry for the extension concerned and the corresponding infrastructure; it is not entirely Swiss, whatever the extension.
This has no bearing on the location of your hosted data, which sits on D&D’s Swiss infrastructure.
See also
A domain portfolio to get back under control?
Send us the list, even an incomplete or approximate one. We will do the inventory with you.