Tucows
More info
- Creator
- Scott Swedorski
- Released
- 1993–
- Type
- Domain registrar, formerly a download site
A download site with two cows in its logo that became one of the world's largest domain wholesalers.
The name is an acronym: "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software". Scott Swedorski started the site in 1993 in Flint, Michigan, as a collection of shareware for getting Windows 3.1 onto the internet: FTP clients, newsreaders, mail programs. Software was rated in cows rather than stars, and mirrors of the site ran at ISPs all over the world.
Downloads turned out to be a worse business than domains. From Toronto, Tucows built OpenSRS, a wholesale platform that lets hosting companies and resellers sell domains under their own brand, and later the retail brand Hover. In 2017 it bought rival eNom. Along the way it also ran the mobile carrier Ting and laid fibre in small American towns, which is not where most people expected the cow site to end up.