Tucows Acquires EPAG

Company to expand domain coverage to over 200 TLDs through this acquisition.

Tucows Inc., a provider of domain names, email and other internet services, today announced that it has acquired all the shares of EPAG Domainservices GmbH, an ICANN-accredited Registrar, from QSC AG for approximately USD 2.5 Million (EUR 1.5 Million to purchase the shares and the settlement of a working capital adjustment of EUR 0.25 Million) through an all-cash transaction.

The company says that EPAG has over 400,000 domains under management and is notable for offering over 200 Top Level Domains (TLDs). It plans to continue serving EPAG customers and resellers via existing EPAG tools and will also integrate EPAG's domain services into its own OpenSRS wholesale domain registration service.

It claims that this acquisition further strengthens OpenSRS' position as a provider in wholesale domain registration and extends its commitment to providing broad TLD coverage to its resellers. Currently OpenSRS manages 11 million domains across 33 TLDs. With this acquisition OpenSRS will now manage over 11.5 million domain names and by the end of the year OpenSRS resellers will have access to over 200 TLDs.

"We believe combining the power of OpenSRS' 12,000 active resellers in over 120 countries with EPAG's ability to register such a broad range of TLDs will make OpenSRS unique in the industry," said Tucows President & CEO Elliot Noss. "We expect that the deep expertise in registry integration we gain from EPAG will add invaluable bench-strength to our team as we prepare for ICANN's roll-out of new TLDs."

The company states that the acquisition of EPAG adds hundreds of new German-language resellers to the OpenSRS channel, providing the company access to a market to which it had relatively little exposure previously. Dave Woroch, Tucows' EVP Sales noted, "We are happy to welcome EPAG customers to OpenSRS and assure them they will continue to get the same great services and support they have come to expect from the EPAG team. Over time we look forward to providing additional features and services that can help EPAG customers grow their businesses."

"We congratulate Tucows on their acquisition of EPAG and are confident that this change of ownership helps to accomplish the strategic goals of both QSC AG and EPAG," said Ingo Hattendorf, responsible for the transaction at QSC AG.