History

Tucows started as a simple shareware site, and has grown into a stable of 3 businesses each sharing the same goal: making the Internet better.

2022

Tucows launches Wavelo!

A new Tucows business is born—Wavelo! This new telecom SaaS platform launches to shake up the global OSS/BSS market, offering flexible software that helps telecom operators derive more value from their networks and deliver more value to their customers.

Making “waves” in the telecom market

The introduction of Wavelo’s flexible and scalable software has been critical in supporting DISH’s MVNO ecosystem, anchored by Boost Mobile, and their 5G rollout across the United States.

Ting expands rapidly in both Colorado and Virginia

Ting announces three of its largest markets to-date, all within the first half of 2022: Alexandria, Virginia; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Aurora, Colorado.

2021

Goodbye Tucows Downloads

The Tucows Downloads site officially retires. The iconic TUCOWS software library played an integral role in sowing the seeds for the Tucows we know today and its importance in the early distribution of software and in the history of the Internet itself cannot be overstated. Tucows Downloads has been saved by the Internet Archive.

Ting says, “Hello Arizona!”

Ting Internet expands its U.S. footprint and enters Arizona with an acquisition of Simply Bits. As part of this deal, Ting assumes all of Simply Bits’ existing infrastructure and customers, adding approximately 4,500 customers to the Tucows family.

UNR’s registry platform joins Tucows

Tucows Domains acquires UNR Corp’s registry platform service, complementing Tucows’ existing reseller and retail domain services.

Top 100 GTA employer — again!

Tucows is named one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers for a second time, recognized for our employee culture and growth opportunities amidst our rapid expansion as an organization.

2020

Tucows partners with DISH

Ting Mobile signs a monumental deal to become DISH’s technology partner. This collaboration disrupts the retail wireless market and prepares customers for DISH’s first virtualized, standalone 5G network.

Ting installs free Wi-Fi hot spots across the U.S.

In key locations such as Charlottesville, Holly Springs, and Fuquay-Varina, Ting Internet launches its fiber-fed, weatherproof access points (APs) which allow community members to publicly access the internet. This project makes connecting for work or school more accessible during the pandemic.

2019

Tucows goes to Europe with Ascio Technologies

With Tucows acquisition of Ascio Technologies, Tucows is able to make the Internet better in more countries. Ascio’s resellers now benefit from Tucows’ customer-focused approach and domain expertise.

Ting brings high-speed fiber Internet to Solana Beach

Making the community the second Ting Town in California and the tenth Ting Town in the U.S.

Tucows was recognized as a Top GTA 2020 Employer by Mediacorp Canada Inc.

2018

Ting expands to the Western slopes of Colorado

Ting Internet hits a new milestone with the strategic acquisition of Cedar Holdings Group, strengthening Ting’s fiber networks in Colorado and adding approximately 6,400 addresses to the Ting family.

2017

Tucows acquires Enom

After acquiring Melbourne IT’s international wholesale domain reseller channel in 2016, Tucows acquired Enom in 2017, establishing itself as the second largest domain name registrar and largest wholesale registrar in the world.

2015

Ting expands to Internet service

Ting lights up its first customer in Charlottesville, Virginia with fiber-to-the-home, symmetrical Gigabit per second Internet service. This launched a new mission to bring crazy fast fiber Internet and crazy good customer service to homes and businesses across the country and shake up a cable industry that desperately needed shaking.

2012

Tucows launches Ting

In February 2012, Tucows launched Ting, a mobile phone service dedicated to bringing clarity and control to US mobile phone customers.

2008

Tucows relaunches OpenSRS and Hover and launches YummyNames.

On July 31, Tucows rebranded its wholesale Reseller services division as OpenSRS. Resellers’ sustained loyalty to OpenSRS was one reason behind the decision to re-launch the brand, and key to that loyalty is the company’s reputation as the most reseller-friendly among Internet services wholesalers.

On October 29, Tucows launches YummyNames. The new service provides exclusive access to a large selection of premium domain names from the Tucows Domain Name Portfolio. Created especially with marketers in mind, YummyNames allows people to search for and obtain the perfect domain name for their organization from tens of thousands of high-quality domain names.

On December 8, Tucows rebranded its retail division as Hover, providing consumers with a hassle-free domain management service that makes it easy for anyone to buy a domain name, set up a personalized email address and connect a domain name to all of their web services – in seconds.

2007

Tucows continues to expand its presence in hosted email, launches a radical redesign of its software download site, and continues to innovate with its reseller services offerings.

On May 23, Tucows introduced the next generation of Tucows Email Service. The new email platform featured AJAX-enabled webmail, and competitive storage and features.

On July 31, a radical redesign of Tucows downloads, one of the most popular software download sites in the world, is launched to enhance overall user experience, including new social networking features.

On November 19, Tucows announces two programs, Parked Pages Program and Expired Domains Program. Both offer additional sources of revenue to resellers, including a slice of the growing domain name re-sale market through a share of Tucows Premium Domains service sales revenues.

2006

Tucows extends commitment to Email services with acquisition of Critical Path’s hosted messaging business and acquires the NetIdentity surname portfolio to offer personalized web services.

In January, Tucows completed the acquisition of Critical Path’s Hosted Messaging Business. With this acquisition the company became a leading provider of hosted email services, provisioning millions of mailboxes.

Understanding the secondary market for domain names represented a new source of revenue for Tucows and our services provider customers, the company Domain Name Auctions and Parked Pages to its wholesale offerings, in February.

On June 19, Tucows completed the acquisition of Mailbank.com Inc. (doing business as NetIdentity). The acquisition of this large portfolio of surname-based domains extends opportunity to offer personalized web services to the wholesale channel.

On August 26, Tucows purchased the online calendar service Kiko.

2005

Tucows continues pattern of steady growth, begins trading on TSX and NASDAQ

In May, Tucows enhances its software download site by adding capacity and improving usability.

Shares of common stock in Tucows commence trading on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX:TCX) and on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:TC), on August 19.

2004

Tucows adds back office solutions to enable service providers to help reduce business complexity and rapidly adopt new value added services; launches first wholesale blogging service.

Tucows reached 4 million domain names under management, in March.

In April, Email Defense, an anti-spam service, was added to the wholesale service line.

Also in April, Tucows acquired Boardtown Corporation, the producers of the Platypus Billing System and Wombat Help Desk for Internet service providers.

Tucows launched Blogware, the first wholesale blogging service for ISPs and webhosting companies, in May.

The wholesale service line was expanded to include Website Building tools, in June.

2003

Tucows expands its suite of wholesale Internet services with Email and Managed DNS

In February, Tucows began offering email services to and for distribution by service providers. Managed DNS was added to the wholesale service line, in December.

2001

Tucows provides back-end registry services for Afilias and merges with Infonautics, Inc.

In May, Tucows launched the first EPP-based global registry management service, Liberty Registry Management Services (LibertyRMS), for generic top-level domains (gTLDs) including .info. LibertyRMS had an exclusive two-year contract with Afilias to provide the registry operations for the new generic top-level domain .info. Tucows has since sold LibertyRMS to Afilias.

On August 28, Tucows merged with Infonautics, Inc., an Internet information services company. On completion of the merger, Infonautics changed its name to Tucows Inc. The company was quoted on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board under the symbol “TCOW.”

2000

Tucows becomes the first wholesale registrar and launches OpenSRS

The company began accepting domain name registrations from ISPs and web hosting companies through the OpenSRS platform in January 2000. At first, registrations were available under .com, .net and .org. In the fall, Tucows added .uk and .ca to its service line. Since 2000, Tucows has continued to add new top-level domains including the gTLDs .info, .biz, and .name, and the ccTLDs .tv (Tuvalu), .cc (Cocos), .us (United States), .cn (China), and .de (Germany).

1999

Tucows accredited by ICANN as a domain name registrar

When the domain name registration monopoly was opened to competition in 1999, Tucows used the opportunity to leverage its experience and relationships with Internet service providers and grow into new areas. The company applied for and received its registrar accreditation from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in April 1999.

1995

Tucows acquired by Toronto-based ISP Internet Direct

Internet Direct was one of the first of Tucows mirror sites.

1994

ISPs around the world begin to ‘mirror’ Tucows’ libraries

Internet service providers (ISPs) and other partner sites around the world began ‘mirroring’ Tucows software libraries to provide fast, local downloads to their end-users and save on bandwidth costs.

1993

Tucows launches in Flint, Michigan

The origins of what is now Tucows began in Flint, Michigan in 1993. While working for local libraries, Scott Swedorski noticed the public’s increasing interest in the World Wide Web and used his personal website to offer downloadable software. He dubbed this service TUCOWS, an acronym for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software, which quickly gained recognition as the first site to offer software on a freeware or shareware basis.