Gandi.net

Industry:	Registrar
Founded:	1999
Headquarters:	Paris
Country:	France
Products:	Domain name registration Web hosting
Website:	http://en.gandi.net
Key People
Stephan Ramoin(President) Nicolas Lhuillery (Head of Product, Gandi SAS) Leland Vandervort (Director, Technical Operations, Gandi SAS) Pascal Bouchareine (Director, R&D, Gandi SAS) Marc Siegel (COO, Gandi US Inc.) Howard Leadmon (CTO, Gandi US Inc.)

Gandi SAS (Gestion et Attribution des Noms de Domaine sur Internet - Management and Allocation of Domain Names on the Internet in English) is the largest domain name provider in France, and web host. The company's head office is in Paris.

Origins

Gandi is a domain name registrar that was founded in March 2000 by Valentin Lacambre, Laurent Chemla, Pierre Beyssac and David Nahmias, with the goal of opening up the domain name market. The project was met with a resounding success, and the company began its philanthropic tradition of sponsoring alternative organizations, "Gandi Supports".

2005 to present

In 2005, a 16-million dollar deal was signed, changing ownership and management to a team of internet experts led by Stephan Ramoin (formerly of MultiMania/Lycos), and three investors Joe White, Eirik Pettersen (co-founders of the online website creation application, moonfruit.com), and Warren Stephens. The purchase represented a positive changing force for the company and a decision was made to maintain the original philosophy of being an ethical alternative in the industry. Already, plans were made for steering Gandi.net towards cloud hosting services and other domain name services.

Gandi.net is currently one of Europe's leading registrars, providing over a million domains to customers throughout 192 countries.

In 2008, Gandi launched its Xen-based VPS cloud hosting service, based on a system of "shares" and scalable resources that can be adjusted in real time.

2010 marked the creation of its subsidiary company in the United States, Gandi US Inc., along with opening of a data center in downtown Baltimore, and business offices in Hunt Valley, Maryland, bringing Gandi closer to its American customers, both in terms of the physical location of servers, though also for customer support, which until then had been exclusively operated out of Paris, France at Place de la Nation.

Customer support

Gandi has chosen to base its development on the satisfaction of its customers, not on advertising to those that are not customers. Gandi does not have any marketing department or advertising team. Since all publicity is made by word-of-mouth, Gandi necessarily places strategic importance on the quality of support. Even in cases regarding complaints against domains, Gandi treats each case on an individual basis.

Customer support is currently provided in three languages (English, Spanish, and French).

Gandi supports

A strong supporter and advocate of open-source software and rights, since September 2010 Gandi supports Creative Commons, providing them with free domain registrations and renewals, as well as VPS services.

Other projects that Gandi supports: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Students for Free Culture, The Spamhaus Project, Debian, Dotclear, Paris Web, World Wide Fund for Nature, VideoLAN, Template:Dn, Canard PC, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Demotix, GoodPlanet, Jamendo, In Libro Veritas, and Arrêt sur Images le retour.