We have successfully passed the CZ.NIC certification. Here are the details plus a description of the certification process. A short update. We have reached 30,000 active domains in less than a year of operation.
Here are two small updates.
Today, we have crossed the 30,000 active domains mark, which we have done in less than a year, with about 26,000 of them this year (and over 10,000 in the last 2.5 months), showing that our growth is accelerating.
And the second news is that yesterday the .cz domain administrator – CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o., published the results of the registrar certification. Officially, it is a certification of registrars intended for retail, i.e. for end customers. So we have another certificate (in addition to the certificates already obtained ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 from TÜV SÜD ).
The initial idea of the certification was presented by CZ.NIC here:
http://www.nic.cz/page/928/projekt-certifikace-registratoru/
and since then CZ.NIC has continuously carried out the certification, which it published today. In the end, 9 companies passed the certification and we received 4 stars out of 5 possible. Overall, it was the fourth place of all participants. We missed out on 5 possible stars by a whisker, but it was unresolvable for us at this point. Soon, however, we will be able to pass the certification with a full number of stars.
The certification results are expressed by the respective number of stars obtained in the range 1-5. 3 companies received 5 stars, 3 other companies received 4 stars. 2 companies have 3 stars and 1 company has 2 stars. Other registrars have decided that they do not want to undergo certification.
The result of the whole certification is here:
http://www.nic.cz/whois/registrars/list/1/
And now we can use the icon:
and “flaunt” the title of being a certified registrar.
What was evaluated
Several criteria were evaluated, each with a different weight and a different number of points. In most of the criteria, we succeeded with full points. Although we had to speed up some of our planned steps (for example, the introduction of expiration notifications via SMS), we only improved some things (help in order forms). Some points we couldn’t do (maybe we don’t think about it or it didn’t happen that fast) or didn’t want to (some things we don’t even plan).
If you are interested in the result of our efforts, read on.
Where we succeeded
Method of ordering a domain – full points, because it is possible to register a domain online via the form, but we will not reject clients who do not know what to do and want to register with our assistance via e-mail or chat.
The technical support method also scored full points, because we have not only e-mail but also chat. We have also launched telephone support here for safety, which is still in test mode and we still prefer our chat. Other points are for round-the-clock customer support, which you usually know we have, and moreover, this support is fully functioning to the satisfaction of you – our customers.
Formal matters such as the price list available from the homepage, which is also complete, are also in order. Use of SSL for registration, fully functional registration available right on the homepage, which also works with images turned off. All of this, including checking the validity of the forms, checking email addresses, we also have in order.
On top of that, of course, we support IPv6, different browsers, everything works even with images turned off…
Fully functional administration…including DNS server changes, we offer web hosting, DNS hosting, we send AUTH-ID to clients.
Among other things, we evaluated the help, the existence of a glossary of terms, links to WHOIS, agreement with the rules
As far as payments are concerned, we have also had success with card payments, our emails contain good information for making payments, we send reminders, we have a credit system. Expiry notifications are also fine, and we have also introduced SMS notifications (in addition to emails and administration).
We also get points for the fact that we make changes to the holder using officially certified signatures. We are planning other solutions in the future and everyone will choose how they want to authorize changes according to how they value their domain.
Where we have failed (so far)
We do not offer a foreign language version yet. We are planning more language versions, because we are only operating in the Czech Republic, so we only need the Czech version of the website. We must boast that we now have customers from Poland, Austria (we sell a lot of VPS there) and one of our colleagues in customer support provides support in Russian, which is appreciated by customers from the former Soviet Union 🙂 .
We can’t register multiple domains at the same time, but we are planning to. We will prepare and test during September and expect to start bulk domain operations in October. MyID is not supported and we have no plans to do so yet. This service is interesting, it’s an interesting idea, but there’s a bit of a flaw in that it doesn’t replace a certification authority for communication with the authorities, or it’s not supported by data boxes, because authorisation to data boxes is a chapter in itself… DNSSEC – you know that We support DNSSEC for .cz domains, but the certification also evaluated, among other things, whether the registrar’s own website works on DNSSEC. We have an official web presence at http://hosting.wedos.com and we are not (yet) able to use DNSSEC for .com domains. On the other hand, it is a pity that CZ.NIC did not evaluate how the DNS servers are designed, because it is (almost) more important than using DNSSEC. We have our DNS servers very (operationally) secure. We have 4 DNS servers, which are in 2 different geographical locations, on 2 different standalone systems, and at the same time we use 4 different domain extensions (.cz, .eu, .com and .net) for our DNS server names. This was (unfortunately) not evaluated in the certification. Maybe this will be a topic for next time. And the results will (maybe) be different. We hope that you will be satisfied with our service despite the above mentioned shortcomings, where we did not get full points and therefore do not have full stars. You will soon see the full number of stars as well.