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Spaceship

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Spaceship, Inc. is an American domain registrar A company that registers domain names for customers with the registry. Full definition accredited by ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers The nonprofit that coordinates the global DNS and gTLD policy. Full definition, with IANA registrar ID The unique number that identifies an ICANN-accredited registrar. Full definition 3862. It sells domain registration Obtaining the right to use a domain name for a set period. Full definition to the public. In a 2024 filing, Namecheap A large American retail registrar, also known for challenging ICANN decisions on pricing. Full definition described "the Namecheap family (Namecheap and Spaceship)". On 15 October 2026 Namecheap's founder, Richard Kirkendall, announced that Spaceship would sell domains at cost from then on, renewal Paying to extend a domain registration for more time. Full definition included.

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Industry roles and organizations

Updated on 3 min read

Spaceship is a company that registers domain name A readable internet name made of labels separated by dots. Full definition for its customers. As of October 2026, ICANN, the organization that coordinates domain names, accredits it as a registrar, and IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The functions that coordinate the root zone, IP addresses and protocol numbers. Full definition lists it as Spaceship, Inc. with registrar ID 3862. In a filing of 13 September 2024, Namecheap, another registrar, described Spaceship as part of the “Namecheap family”.

What Spaceship is

As of October 2026, IANA’s registry The central database and system of a top-level domain, or loosely the organization that runs it. Full definition of registrar IDs lists Spaceship, Inc. under ID 3862 with the status “Accredited”. As of October 2026, ICANN’s list of accredited registrars shows the same name and number, gives the United States of America as its country and www.spaceship.com as its website.

IANA’s registry entry for ID 3862 is dated 27 August 2020. IANA does not say what that date stands for, so it should not be read as the accreditation date.

As of October 2026, the company’s own domain, spaceship.com, is registered through its own accreditation, with ID 3862.

Its role in the domain system

Spaceship is a registrar, not a registry. A registry runs a top-level domain such as .com; a registrar takes registrations from customers and records them with the registry. Accredited registrars are bound to ICANN by the RAA Registrar Accreditation Agreement The contract between ICANN and each accredited registrar. Full definition (RAA).

As of October 2026, IANA lists an RDAP Registration Data Access Protocol The modern protocol for looking up domain registration data, replacing WHOIS. Full definition service for Spaceship at rdap.spaceship.com. Its terms notice refers to Spaceship as an “ICANN-accredited registrar”.

What the records show over time

ICANN publishes monthly reports from the .com registry operator The organization that holds the contract or mandate for a TLD and sets its rules. Full definition, Verisign The company that operates the .com and .net registries. Full definition, with the number of .com domains each registrar sponsors, three months after the end of the month they cover. They show activity in .com only, not when Spaceship was accredited or launched.

Spaceship first appears in the report for April 2021, with 2 .com domains. In the reports checked, it sponsored 160 at the end of December 2022 and 256 at the end of March 2023, then rose quickly: 2,333 in April 2023 and 14,574 in May 2023. At the end of June it sponsored:

  • 2023: 26,574 .com domains
  • 2024: 330,264
  • 2025: 986,174
  • 2026: 2,029,905

As of October 2026, June 2026 is the latest month ICANN has published.

Relationship to Namecheap

On 13 September 2024, Namecheap filed a request for an IRP Independent Review Process A review by an independent panel of whether ICANN broke its own Bylaws. Full definition (IRP) against ICANN. In it, Namecheap wrote of “the Namecheap family (Namecheap and Spaceship)” and gave that family “over 20 million domains under management”, counting generic and country-code domains together. This is Namecheap’s own description, made as a party to a dispute. The filing does not say whether Spaceship is a subsidiary, a parent or a sister company, and Spaceship was not a party to the review.

As of October 2026, IANA and ICANN list the two as separate registrars: Namecheap, Inc. has IANA ID 1068 and its own RDAP service. Neither record states an ownership link.

What it offers

As an accredited registrar, Spaceship registers domain names for its customers. As of October 2026, its public API documentation also covers renewals, transfers, nameservers and DNS record One entry in a DNS zone, made of a name, a type, a TTL and data. Full definition. It names three other services. SellerHub lists domains for sale, with a checkout link through which a buyer can purchase a listed domain. SafePay handles escrow A neutral service holding payment until a domain is transferred. Full definition transactions. Hyperlift hosts applications. The list of top-level domains it offers is not described here, because no primary record covering it could be checked.

How to check the registrar of record

The registrar of record The registrar that currently manages a given domain at the registry. Full definition is the accredited company that holds a registration at the registry. It may differ from the brand a customer bought from, for example when a reseller A business that sells domains using another registrar's accreditation. Full definition sold the name. For a .com name such as example.com:

  1. An RDAP lookup at the registry (for .com, Verisign’s public lookup service) returns the record.
  2. Its registrar section gives the registrar’s name and IANA registrar ID.
  3. The ID can be matched against IANA’s registry of registrar IDs.

As of October 2026, the record for spaceship.com shows ID 3862 and the name Spaceship, Inc. ID 1068 would point to Namecheap, Inc. instead.

  • Namecheap, Inc. is a separate accredited registrar with its own ID and RDAP service, although Namecheap describes both as one “family”.
  • Verisign operates the .com registry; Spaceship is one of the registrars that sponsor .com names.

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