As some of you are aware, we have been pursuing accreditation with ZICTA so that we can register and manage dot-zm domains. In order to accomplish this we partnered with registered ISP Preworx, and our application was recently approved.
This will be particularly good news for those of you who have dot-zm domains registered with a certain registrar who suspends and deletes domains without notice and without billing registrants, as happened most recently in February and will undoubtedly happen again in the future.
We have already transferred those domain registrations for which we are responsible. At the same time we have corrected the registration information for these domains to ensure they are registered by the correct organisations, and are using current contact information.
While we have not recommended dot-zm domains in the past for both technical and administrative reasons, the technical reasons were addressed by ZICTA within the last few years. The administrative reasons are primarily related to poor management by registrars, such as the aforementioned registrar that suspends domains without notice and without issuing invoices. This, as all NinerNet clients know, is not how we conduct business.
Also in the past we have not been able to offer any assistance — only advice — when clients had issues with their dot-zm registrations and registrars. Now, for those clients who have dot-zm domains, if you transfer your dot-zm registration to NinerNet/Preworx, you will be assured of the same service and attention to detail that you are used to with your hosting and other domain registrations. In fact, while it is ultimately your choice whether or not you transfer your dot-zm domain under the management of NinerNet/Preworx, we do strongly recommend that you do.
If you have an existing non-dot-zm domain that includes the word “Zambia” or “Africa” — e.g., company-zambia.com or company.africa — and would like to consider registering a dot-zm instead or as well, please contact us to advise us and we’ll respond with options for you. Your options include:
- .ac.zm: Academic institutions
- .biz.zm: Businesses
- .co.zm: Commercial entities
- .com.zm: Commercial entities
- .edu.zm: Academic institutions
- .gov.zm: Government
- .info.zm: Information
- .mil.zm: Military
- .net.zm: Networks
- .org.zm: Non-commercial organizations
- .sch.zm: Schools
Of course, some of the above are restricted.
Pricing has been another reason that dot-zm domains have not been popular. To be frank, we don’t have any firm commitment from ZICTA on our pricing yet. We’d love to be able to say that we know what price we will be charging for domains next year and five years from now, but we can’t. However, as part of our application we did commit to pricing “in line with industry standards for most TLDs.” What this means for now is that we intend to charge the same price for a dot-zm domain that we currently charge for a dot-com, which is K351.50. Actually, considering we’re not paying for dot-zm domain registrations in forex, we’ll peg that at K350 per year unless and until ZICTA makes any significant change to their pricing model.
Even better is that — subject to ZICTA’s pricing — we will charge only half that, K175 for a year, for all transferred and new domains for the rest of 2020. This applies to all existing clients, and any new clients. And remember, we pay a 10% bounty for new clients — to both the referring client and the new client — based on the new client’s spending with us for their first six months.
Please contact us to transfer your existing dot-zm domain (if you have one), or register a new one. Thank-you.
