Prices

• How much do you charge for a domain ?

  Per year, .COM, .ORG and .NET domains cost 12 EUR (about 12 USD), VAT not included. You pay 1 year in advance and will be billed each subsequent year.

• How much is 1 euro in US dollars?

  One euro roughly equals one US dollar (actually, currently 1 euros is worth about 0.9 US dollar).

  You can easily convert 12 euros to any currency using the currency converter at Yahoo. Note that this may differ from the actual conversion rate used by your bank for your credit card.

• What about VAT ?

  If you are an individual from France or elsewhere within the European Union, you have to pay 19.6% additional VAT. If you are a French company, you also have to pay 19.6% VAT. If you are a company from somewhere else within the European Union, you need not pay VAT but you must provide us with the VAT number which has been allocated to you for intra-EC trade. Finally, if you are not from the European Union, you need not pay VAT at all.

• How can your prices be so low, since the Internic rate is 35 USD per year with 2 years paid at initial registration?

  That's quite simple: we are ICANN-accredited and we buy domains at a bulk price of 6 USD. We think domain prices are much too high and our intention is to push for lower prices.

• Can I pay several years in advance ?

  You will be able to pay up to 10 years in advance. This is not yet available.

• Do you provide bulk rates?

  We do provide bulk rates for high-volume users.

  If you reserve more than 500 domains and use a pre-paid account (not the Web interface), you pay only 10 euros per domain from your 501th domain. Or if you pay 500 domains in advance, you pay 10 euros from your first domain.

• Can our organization have a partnership with GANDI ?

  Yes it can, but do not ask GANDI for lower charges, unless you reserve/renew/transfer more than 500 domains per month (reserving a domain for 2 years in advance counts for 2, so actually the limit is 500 domain.years per month). Please ask us for any specific interface implementation.

How to Pay

• Can I register my domain now and pay for it later ?

  No you cannot. This is a requirement from ICANN.

• Can I use my credit card?

  Yes, that's the simplest way. You just have to use our Web interface.

• I want to register many domains, how can I do?

  If you want to buy at least 20 domains from us, you can use several other payment methods. These require manual handling on our part that we cannot offer for lower amounts.

  You also have to use our PGP email reservation procedure described in this document.

  GANDI will then create you a prepaid account that you will refill perodically. Prepayment can be effected only in Euros or French Francs:

  • by a wire transfer to bank BRED crediting GANDI, account number 10107-00147-710470247-22, SWIFT: BREDFRPP.
  • by a bank check to GANDI, sent to GANDI, 38 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, F-75003 Paris, France.
  In any case, please include necessary account information so that we can credit your account with GANDI.

• I'd like to pay using a check or a wire transfer and use the Web interface, how can I do?

  You currently can't.

  Please don't write to ask, it's not currently one of our priorities due to the manual handling it incurs on us.

Provided Services

• Where is your contract?

  You can find it here.

• Will I be the owner of my domain?

  Yes.

• What exactly do you provide?

  We provide you with ownership of your domain name for a year, with easy modification access to most of its parameters (see below) as often as you see fit.

  Optionally (with no additional charge), we offer Web redirection (URL forwarding) to any Web site, as well as mail forwarding to the administrative contact email address (only one address).

• Which parameters can I modify? You can modify at will, simply by accessing our Web site, for no additional charge:
  • the nameservers list of your domain
  • contacts (persons who can effect these modifications)
  • contact information
  • hosting options:
    • Nameservers hosted by Gandi or hosted elsewhere
    • URL forwarding of www.yourdomain.tld
    • Mail forwarding of yourname

  You cannot modify your domain name itself. If you want to change name, you have to buy another domain.

• Can I have several email forwarding addresses?

  No, you can't.

• Can I hide my site's "real" address which appears in my navigator's address bar after the URL is forwarded?
  No, you can't.

• What do I need to get my own Web pages with my own domain name?
  You need:
  • A domain name. This is provided by Gandi. You are the owner.
  • DNS hosting. This can be provided by Gandi for no extra charge, or by anyone else you chose.
  • Web hosting. This is not provided by Gandi. You have to find a provider.

• What will you host ?

  Gandi is a registrar. This means we only register your domain name.

  As an option, we can host your DNS with no extra charge.

  We won't host your Web pages or your email account, you have to find a provider for this or use your current provider. To make things simpler, we can provide redirection (forwarding) to your existing Web pages or email account, for no extra charge.

• Where should I put my Web pages, then?

  At the provider of your choice. Discuss this with him: he might need to be able to manage your domain. This doesn't mean your domain leaves Gandi, it just means DNS hosting is not provided by Gandi anymore.

  You can modify this yourself at any time after you have an agreement with your provider, Gandi doesn't need to interfere.

• How can I change ownership for a domain?

  Here's the procedure:

  • the new owner must create a GANDI ID for himself
  • the former owner must send us VIA POSTAL MAIL:
    • a mail indicating he wishes to leave ownership of the domain, and giving us the name of the new owner
    • a copy of a proof of identity (ID card or driver's license, for example)
    • a check for an amount of 12 euros (+ 19,6% VAT if relevant)
    This should be sent to GANDI, 38 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, F-75003 Paris, FRANCE.
  • the former owner must modify the domain contacts to put the new owner's ID instead
  • the new owner must send us an e-mail including the address we have to put as owner address in the domain whois database, and stating that the domain contacts have been modified to be his.

Setup Delays

• How much time do I have to wait after requesting registration of my domain ?

  After you paid for your domain and asked for its registration, your domain is reserved by Gandi almost immediately (under normal conditions, within a few minutes). From then on, it is attributed to you and is not available for purchase by anyone else.

  The domain then has to be technically available. This will happen within 24 to 72 hours later, assuming you have provided the correct technical parameters (valid DNS servers) and servers update happens in time.

  Twice a day, at 11AM and 11PM (French time, i.e. 10AM and 10PM UTC) the root and COM, ORG, NET zones are updated by NSI. This update includes all domain registrations and modifications up until then. The zones are then progressively placed onto the root servers (the servers that allow your domain to be available on the Internet). This takes between 24 hours and a few days.

• How much time do I need to wait after I modify the DNS server list for my domain?

  These are the same rules as for a domain creation. See above.

• How much time do I need to wait after I modify my domain forwarding options?

  If you just changed your Web or email forwarding, it will be active within 24 hours. If any modification to your name server list was necessary (for example because previously your DNS servers were not Gandi's), see above.

Miscellaneous

• Can I use an Email template to register a domain with GANDI ?

  Yes, this is already available for pre-paid accounts. See the documentation.

• Can I transfer my existing .COM/.ORG/.NET domain to GANDI ?

  Yes. You will have to pay the same price as a new domain (see above), and it will add one year to the domain end date. There are no extra charges.

  This service is now available for single-domain transfer on our web server.

  This service is also available for prepaid accounts (at least 20 domains). You will have to provide some proof that you legally act on behalf of the domain owner.

  For that, you must fax at +33 1 4029 1902 a declaration on letterhead paper from your company stating the following:

  I, <your name>, hereby certifies that I own PGP key id ABCDEFGH, as well as NSI contact handles XXX, YYY...

  On receipt by GANDI of a PGP email containing adequate instructions, and signed with the above key, we authorize GANDI to request in our name transfer at GANDI of a domain we own at NSI, provided that domain has one of the above contact IDs as shown by NSI's whois database.

  Then we'll enable the transfer command with adequate parameters.

• What is a PGP key?

  PGP is cryptographic software, it can electronically crypt and sign documents. Each PGP user has a key which allows him or her to be identified. Gandi uses this system to protect access to prepaid accounts. For more information on PGP and similar software, please see the sites of GPG (free software) and PGP.

• Can I reserve domains outside of .COM/.ORG/.NET, for example in .FR ?

  Sorry, not with Gandi. We only do .COM/.ORG/.NET. TLD .FR, in particular, is managed with a policy that prohibits simple and cheap registrations. As a consequence Gandi won't sell .FR domains.