Our domain was abruptly blocked by our registrar this morning. Our NOC team and myself tried to get in touch with them and they tell us "Contact our legal". Even I could not get in touch with anyone beyond their phone operator. The domain was restored, but as DNS takes time to restore, we are still facing issues. They later claimed there were abuse complaints about Zoho.com emails (which is our personal email service with millions of free and paid users). We received a total of 3 complaints from them and two of them have been acted upon and one is under investigation.
Once we dig our way out of this, we will find ways make sure no one takes down our domain again this way.
I work in this industry and it's a very clear separation between bulk registrars and those that maintain fewer but high value domain names. The latter usually give you a personal contact person to call and work proactively to deal with threats to companies' domain names and trade marks. I don't think I have ever heard of a domain being abruptly suspended by such a registrar.
The cost is usually 5x-10x that of the cheapest registrars so there is naturally a balance to be struck, and as I work in this industry I might be a bit biased. However the damage when waiting on the TTL when registries update NS records sounds very substantial when they first suspend and later restore a domain name in what sound as a very reckless behavior.
I've always been a bit perplexed as to how registrar's are created. How could I become a registrar?
Any advise or resources to explore this very open question would be wonderful.
Cheers J
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/accreditation-2012-02-...
The cheaper, and easier way, if you're looking to start selling domains with a lower barrier to entry (but less control over how much you pay/how you sell your domains) is to find a white-label reseller registrar.