--- id: "ionos" kind: "glossary-term" title: "IONOS" language: "en" category: "Industry roles and organizations" updated: "2026-10-13T10:05:42Z" canonical: "https://tldlog.com/glossary/ionos/" translations: es: "https://tldlog.com/es/glosario/ionos/" de: "https://tldlog.com/de/glossar/ionos/" fr: "https://tldlog.com/fr/glossaire/ionos/" it: "https://tldlog.com/it/glossario/ionos/" pt-BR: "https://tldlog.com/pt/glossario/ionos/" ru: "https://tldlog.com/ru/glossariy/ionos/" zh-Hans: "https://tldlog.com/zh/cihui/ionos/" --- # IONOS IONOS is a German web hosting and cloud company that began as 1\&1 in 1988 and has used the IONOS name since 2018. Its company IONOS SE is an ICANN-accredited registrar (IANA ID 83) and an accredited .es registrar. According to IONOS, it is part of the United Internet group. IONOS is a web hosting and cloud company based in Montabaur, Germany, that began as 1&1. One of its companies, IONOS SE, is a registrar accredited by ICANN, which means it can register domain names for its customers in gTLDs such as .com. It also registers .es names, and it sells domains alongside hosting, email and website tools. ## What IONOS is IONOS sells web hosting, email, website building and cloud services, with domain names as part of that offering. IONOS SE has its address in Montabaur and is entered in the commercial register of the Montabaur local court. According to the group's annual report for 2025, IONOS SE is wholly owned by IONOS Holding SE, which belongs to IONOS Group SE, a holding company listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. As of 31 December 2025, United Internet AG held 63.8% of IONOS Group SE's shares. The company traces its origin to 1&1, which it says was founded in 1988. It took the IONOS name in 2018 and has used "IONOS" on its own, without "1&1", since January 2020, according to the company. As of October 2026, IONOS's US website states 22 million domains under management, a figure that covers all TLDs and is counted by the company's own method. ## Its role in the domain system IONOS acts as a registrar. A registry runs a top-level domain such as .com; a registrar sells names in it to the public and passes each registration to the registry. As of October 2026, official records show: - IONOS SE holds IANA registrar ID 83, with the status Accredited. The same IANA list gives its RDAP service at rdap.ionos.com. - ICANN's list of accredited registrars shows IONOS SE, ID 83, with the country Germany. - Red.es, through its unit Dominios.es, lists IONOS SE as one of 107 accredited .es registrars, which it calls "agentes registradores". The ID 83 accreditation appears in ICANN's monthly registry reports under the name 1 & 1 Internet AG from January 2011, the earliest report checked for this page. The records consulted do not show when the accreditation began. IONOS SE does not appear on the member list published by DENIC, the registry for .de, as of October 2026. The sources for this page do not show how IONOS handles .de registrations. The monthly reports also give a sense of scale. At the end of June 2026, the reports filed by Verisign, the registry operator for .com and .net, show 4,005,965 .com names and 337,314 .net names under ID 83, out of 170,253,825 .com names in total. ICANN withholds these reports until three months after the end of the month they cover, so June 2026 is the latest month available as of October 2026. ## History in dated steps A registrar's name can change while its IANA registrar ID stays the same. ICANN's monthly .com reports show this for ID 83. The months below are when each name appears in the reports checked, not the legal dates of the changes: - 1 & 1 Internet AG: from January 2011 to January 2016. - 1&1 Internet SE: from the April 2016 report. - 1&1 IONOS SE: from the April 2019 report. - IONOS SE: from the November 2021 report. Other steps, as the company describes them on its US website: - 1988: 1&1 is founded. - 2003: 1&1 launches 1&1 Inc. in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania, in the United States. - 2018: 1&1 combines its web hosting, applications and server product lines with the cloud infrastructure business of ProfitBricks and becomes IONOS. - January 2020: the brand "1&1 IONOS" becomes "IONOS". - 8 February 2023: initial public offering (IPO) of IONOS Group SE. - September 2023: IONOS is included in the SDAX, a German stock index. The annual report adds that the shares have been in the MDAX index since 23 June 2025. ## What it offers in domains The US website lists domain registration, domain transfer, bulk domain search, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates and a WHOIS lookup tool, next to hosting, email, website building and cloud products. The US terms say that a domain registration is subject to the UDRP, to policies adopted by ICANN, and to registrar and registry procedures. They say that IONOS accepts transfers of names from other registrars. They also say that IONOS may act as "Designated Agent" for a material change to the registrant of a name, a role used in a change of registrant. The company's abuse page separates its two roles. It asks for complaints to go both to the registrar of a domain and to the hoster of the content: when acting "purely as a registrar", it says, it may be unable to reach the content, and only the hoster can resolve such cases quickly, unless the domain name itself clearly indicates abuse. ## Registrar and contracting company The company that signs with a customer is not always the company that holds the accreditation. In the United States, the terms name IONOS Inc., a Delaware corporation located in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania, as the contracting party. IONOS Inc. says it "acts only as an intermediary" between the customer and "the organization providing the domain name". The ICANN accreditation, ID 83, is held by IONOS SE in Germany. As of October 2026, the Spanish terms are those of IONOS Cloud S.L.U., another subsidiary of IONOS SE, and the German terms are those of IONOS SE itself. The German terms also describe IONOS as an intermediary for domains and apply DENIC's terms to .de names. ## How it differs from related companies - **Resellers.** A reseller sells names under another registrar's accreditation. IONOS SE holds its own, ID 83. - **IONOS Group SE.** The listed holding company. The accredited registrar is its operating subsidiary IONOS SE. - **Arsys.** A Spanish subsidiary of IONOS SE; Arsys says it joined the group in August 2013. IANA lists "Arsys Internet, S.L. dba NICLINE.COM" as a separate accredited registrar, ID 379, with its own RDAP service. ## A worked example A customer in the United States registers example.com through IONOS. Under the US terms, the customer's contract is with IONOS Inc. Registration data for the name, looked up through RDAP, shows the registrar as IONOS SE, IANA ID 83. If the customer later moves example.com to another registrar, the ICANN Transfer Policy applies, as with any accredited registrar. ## Sources - [Annual Report 2025 (IONOS Group SE)](https://www.ionos-group.com/fileadmin/Publications/Berichte/FY_2025/IONOS_Annual_Report_2025.pdf) - [Registrar IDs (IANA registry, CSV)](https://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids/registrar-ids-1.csv) - [List of Accredited Registrars (ICANN)](https://www.icann.org/en/contracted-parties/accredited-registrars/list-of-accredited-registrars) - [.com registry monthly transactions report, June 2026](https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/mrr/com/com-transactions-202606-en.csv) - [About us - The company at a glance (IONOS, US site)](https://www.ionos.com/about) - [General Terms and Conditions (IONOS Inc., US site)](https://www.ionos.com/terms-gtc/general-terms-and-conditions/) - [Nuestros agentes registradores (Dominios.es, Red.es)](https://www.dominios.es/es/agentes-registradores/nuestros-agentes-registradores?page=6) ## related terms - [registrar](https://tldlog.com/glossary/registrar/) - [retail registrar](https://tldlog.com/glossary/retail-registrar/) - [reseller](https://tldlog.com/glossary/reseller/) - [IANA registrar ID](https://tldlog.com/glossary/iana-registrar-id/) - [ICANN accreditation](https://tldlog.com/glossary/accreditation/) - [Red.es](https://tldlog.com/glossary/red-es/) - [DUM](https://tldlog.com/glossary/domains-under-management/)