Top Level Design

Internet domain registry

Porkbun

porkbun.com › legal › agreement › ownership_officers

porkbun.com | ownership officers

Porkbun LLC is a fully owned subsidiary of Top Level Design LLC

ICANNWiki

icannwiki.org › Porkbun

Porkbun - ICANNWiki

Porkbun is an ICANN accredited Internet domain registrar founded in 2014 by Ray King and Peter Brual. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Top Level Design, Porkbun's office is situated in Sherwood, Oregon, USA.[1]

Porkbun

porkbun.com › about

porkbun.com | About Us

At Porkbun, it’s about you — our customers. We think you’re the best, and we’re always striving to give you the best experience possible. ... Here’s the deal: every domain registrar pays a fixed cost to the registry (the folks who own the extensions like .com or .org).

Top answer

1 of 7

GoDaddy is the weirdest for me, sounds like a porn site.

2 of 7

Well well, looks like it's story time! Gather 'round and let me tell you about how Porkbun became Porkbun. I think it can be best described as a well orchestrated fluke. Back in 2014 our parent company, Top Level Design LLC, was just an ICANN accredited registry. We were set to operate the TLDs .design, .wiki, .ink and eventually .gay and .tattoo as well. Registries cannot sell ICANN governed TLDs directly to consumers and have to go through ICANN accredited registrars to hawk their wares. It's not exactly easy as a registry to work with registrars to market and sell your TLDs; priorities don't always align, they usually move too slow, they don't have the right messaging you're looking for, etc. So, we decided to start our own registrar mainly so that we could more easily sell our domains using the TLDs we own. This is what ICANN calls vertical integration, when the same company owns both a registry and registrar. There are a lot of rules regarding separation and how a vertically integrated registry / registrar can operate, mostly around fair access to registry services and promotional pricing, but it would allow us to market our TLDs direct to consumer in a way we wanted. In the very early days the name of the registrar really wasn't very important to us, our strategy was to create branded sites on top of the registrar backend and market directly to industry organizations and customers in very niche markets. Our main focus was .design so think organizations like AIGA, IDSA, etc. We would also end up creating generic sites like get.design, get.ink, get.wiki, etc. But, our registrar needed an actual name and so we sat around and looked at what domains we already had in our possession. Our CEO had a collection of decent domain names and there were a few that seemed brandable and fun. I think we narrowed it down to porkbun.com and flyware.com (groan), by the grace of all that is holy and good porkbun.com won and Porkbun LLC was officially formed. As we registered more and more domains and our customer base grew there started to be a demand for folks to be able to have their other domains with us as well. We started onboarding with other registries like Verisign, Identity Digital (then Donuts), PIR, etc and we were starting to become a more generic registrar instead of one dedicated only to the registration of our own TLDs. We started heavily branding Porkbun around pigs, at first real pigs and then the cute cartoon pigs we all know and love (I'm projecting and assuming everyone loves them as much as myself). Eventually we consolidated everything on porkbun.com and shut down the niche sites. Mostly due to our low pricing, ease of use, and no nonsense approach Porkbun started gathering a following of loyal customers and was growing rapidly, we could tell we were on to something and although there was some early talk about rebranding we held strong and doubled down on what we believe is a fun memorable brand. We eventually sold all of our TLDs to GoDaddy in 2021 and 2023 and ever since have been a dedicated domain name registrar hellbent on sticking to our roots. It's a tough and competitive industry but we still believe that having the name Porkbun has helped us grow. It lets us have fun with the brand in a space that is mostly stale and boring and I think most can tell by the little jokes on our site, the puns in our marketing, and our overall quirky nature that the folks running this thing don't particularly like stale and boring 😂 Edit: The other option wasn't registerfly.com it was flyware.com.

Crunchbase

crunchbase.com › person › ray-king

Abdullah Haider - Founder and CEO @ Porkbun - Crunchbase Person Profile

Abdullah Haider - Founder and CEO @ Porkbun

x.com › rathbone

Raymond King (@Rathbone) / X

January 1, 2008 - CEO of Porkbun and Top Level Design (.wiki, .ink, .tattoo and .gay TLDs) ... and pygmy goat herder ... When they do, their posts will show up here. Sign up now to get your own personalized timeline!

Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Top_Level_Design

Top Level Design - Wikipedia

June 3, 2025 - Top Level Design is a company in the United States and parent company of the domain name registrar Porkbun.

History

Top answer

1 of 12

Hello. Thought we'd clear some things up. Top Level Design and Porkbun are in no way Chinese companies. Top level Design is the parent company and owns Porkbun. Both companies are incorporated in the United States and Top Level Design has a narrowly focused registered foreign business in China. Top Level Design was the registry for several TLDs, those TLDs were design, ink, wiki, gay, and tattoo. We recently sold the registry side of our business (the TLDs) to GoDaddy and are in a transition period, so in many ways this is all becoming irrelevant. In order to sell domains on top of these TLDs in China one must operate what is called a WFOE, which stands for wholly foreign-owned enterprise. You can read more about what a WFOE is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_Foreign-Owned_Enterprise . All registries outside of China that wish to sell domains on their TLDs in China and want them to resolve and function correctly must do this. Obviously, almost every registry does this so that they can offer domains to the Chinese market. None of this means that Top Level Design is beholden to Chinese laws or its government except for when it comes to those domains registered by Chinese citizens or Chinese companies in China, that's it. Porkbun is completely outside of the scope of the WFOE and it does not apply at all.

2 of 12

Porkbun was founded by and remains headed by Ray King, an American. He also founded Top Level Design. His parents are from China, but he was born in the US. Top Level Design has a Beijing office and offers domain registration in China, but is not a Chinese company.

RocketReach

rocketreach.co › porkbun-profile_b4734940fc5cd9b6

Porkbun Information

Andrew Merriam is the COO of Porkbun.

reddit.com › r/domains › porkbun review. it's really good!

r/Domains on Reddit: Porkbun review. It's really good!

March 22, 2022 - It's why you're required to provide ... Council owns the domain and set that as a rule. More replies More replies ... Yep. They spam me over and over with slightly different domains daily. They d not respond to abuse reports. I've taken to forwarding the email spam to their HR department. ... I've never had this problem. I have 5 domains with them. ... Can someone tell me if the url porkbun.shop affiliated ...

Porkbun

porkbun.com › home › porkbun archives 1,000,000 domains under management

Porkbun Archives 1,000,000 Domains Under Management - Porkbun.com

June 27, 2023 - Portland, OR, (May 26, 2022) — Porkbun, an Oregon-based domain name registrar, announced today that it has surpassed one million domains under management. Porkbun was founded in March of 2015 and has accumulated over two hundred thousand customers.

Porkbun

porkbun.com › tld › ceo

porkbun.com | .CEO TLD Domain Names

Porkbun is a Top Level Design Company Made in the USA 🇺🇸