Gandi

What Is Gandi?

When Valentin Lacambre, Laurent Chemla, Pierre Beyssac, and David Nahmias founded Gandi in Paris in 1999, domain registration was a market dominated by overpriced incumbents that treated customers as captive. Gandi's founding philosophy — "No Bullshit" — was a direct challenge to that model: transparent pricing, no upsells, no dark patterns, free email with domains, and honest communication. The company received ICANN accreditation in 2000 and spent the next two decades building a reputation that was genuinely rare in the registrar industry: an operator that its customers trusted.

For 23 years, that reputation was largely deserved. Gandi expanded to cover 750+ TLDs, built LiveDNS — an Anycast DNS infrastructure with DNSSEC and a full API — and accumulated over 350,000 active customers across 192 countries, managing more than 2.5 million domain names. It became the default answer for technically sophisticated European users who wanted a domain registrar they did not have to be embarrassed by.

In 2023, Total Web Solutions (trading as Your.Online) acquired Gandi. The acquisition ended the free-email-with-domain offer that had been part of the product since launch, raised mailbox prices from €0.35/month to €3.99/month — a 1040% increase — and triggered a significant customer backlash. The phrase "No Bullshit" appeared in headlines accompanied by considerable irony.

Two-plus years on, the core DNS and domain registration product is intact. The trust is not fully repaired. Evaluating Gandi in 2026 requires holding both of those things simultaneously.

Key Features

Domain Registration Across 750+ TLDs

Gandi's breadth of TLD coverage is a genuine differentiator. Generic TLDs (.com, .net, .org), country-code TLDs (.fr, .de, .uk, .nl, .eu), and new gTLDs (.app, .io, .shop, .photography) are all available from a single interface. For organisations managing domains across multiple markets or needing unusual ccTLDs, the coverage is among the widest of any EU-based registrar.

WHOIS privacy is included by default on all GDPR-eligible domain registrations. There is no opt-in checkbox, no annual fee for privacy, and no upsell flow. The registrant's contact details are shielded from the public WHOIS database automatically. Domain transfer-lock controls and two-factor authentication are also standard, covering the security basics that matter most when a domain is your primary business asset.

LiveDNS — Anycast DNS with DNSSEC and API

LiveDNS is Gandi's managed DNS infrastructure. It operates over an Anycast network with global points of presence, supporting fast DNS propagation and resilience against infrastructure failures. DNSSEC is supported on all domains and enabled at no additional cost — a meaningful default given how many registrars still charge for DNSSEC or omit it entirely.

The DNS API is RESTful and covers the full record lifecycle: create, read, update, and delete any record type without touching the web UI. This is the feature that makes Gandi legitimate as developer infrastructure. Combined with the official Certbot/Let's Encrypt plugin for ACME DNS-01 challenges, and community Terraform providers, Gandi LiveDNS integrates cleanly into automated infrastructure workflows. Zone templates allow consistent DNS configuration to be applied across multiple domains — useful for agencies or SaaS providers managing domains at scale.

AXFR (zone transfer) support lets customers replicate zones to external secondary DNS providers. For teams that want Gandi as primary DNS but need secondary nameservers for additional redundancy, this is the mechanism. Gandi also offers a LiveDNS Premium tier built on Cloudflare's infrastructure for customers needing enterprise-grade DNS resilience.

SSL Certificates

Gandi offers DV (Domain Validated) and OV (Organisation Validated) SSL certificates for purchase. For web hosting customers, Let's Encrypt certificates are issued automatically through the managed hosting environment. Wildcard certificates are available for domains requiring subdomains under a single certificate.

SSL is increasingly commoditised — Let's Encrypt has eliminated the cost case for DV certificates on most workloads — but OV certificates remain relevant for organisations that need their verified company name visible in certificate details, and Gandi's offering here is straightforward.

Email Hosting (Paid, Post-Acquisition)

The email product still exists, but it is no longer free. Post-acquisition, email became a paid add-on: Standard mailboxes at €3.99/month, Premium at €5.99/month per mailbox. The technical product includes webmail, IMAP/SMTP, Sieve filtering, aliases, and forwarding — functionally adequate for small team use.

The decision to restructure email pricing is commercially understandable; the way it was executed — eliminating an offer that many customers had paid multi-year domain registrations expecting to receive — eroded trust in ways that pricing alone does not explain. For new customers evaluating Gandi in 2026, email is a paid add-on. Budget accordingly or use a dedicated email provider like Proton Mail or Tutanota.

Pricing

Gandi's domain pricing occupies the middle to upper range of the European registrar market. Registration prices are competitive on some TLDs — .org at $7.99, .com at $11.00 — while renewal prices, particularly on .com ($38.38/yr) and .net ($39.98/yr), are materially higher than at-cost registrars like Cloudflare Registrar (which charges its actual wholesale cost, currently around $9-10/yr for .com) or Porkbun.

For customers registering one or two domains for a personal project or small business, Gandi's renewal premium is a modest annual cost. For organisations managing 50-100 .com domains, the premium against a low-cost registrar compounds into several hundred euros annually.

The technical value that justifies Gandi's pricing over budget alternatives comes from the DNS infrastructure: Anycast LiveDNS, DNSSEC, API access, zone templates, AXFR. If you only need basic DNS hosting and do not use the API, the cost-benefit case for Gandi over Cloudflare Registrar (which also includes free DNS, DNSSEC, and a good API) is less clear.

Promotions and introductory discounts are regularly available, particularly on new gTLD registrations. The discount page at gandi.net/en-US/discounts lists current offers.

EU Compliance & Privacy

Gandi SAS is a French company operating EU-based infrastructure. Data residency is EU-only, and Gandi complies with GDPR and the French implementation thereof. The WHOIS privacy default is one of the strongest privacy stances in the registrar industry — most competitors require opt-in or charge for this feature.

ICANN accreditation since 2000 means Gandi operates under the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, including ICANN's data protection and domain contact verification policies. Gandi published its first Digital Services Act (DSA) transparency report in May 2025, covering February 2024–February 2025, demonstrating a commitment to DSA compliance documentation that many registrars have not yet matched.

The Your.Online parent group is Dutch-headquartered — within EU jurisdiction — which preserves the CLOUD Act non-exposure that applies to EU-only operators. For customers concerned about US government access to domain registration and DNS data, the ownership structure does not introduce jurisdiction risk.

Who It's Best For

Developers automating DNS management who need a LiveDNS API with DNSSEC, AXFR support, and reliable Anycast infrastructure. The API is clean, well-documented, and covers the full DNS record lifecycle. Gandi LiveDNS integrates with Terraform, Certbot, and standard infrastructure tooling.

Organisations with unusual TLD requirements. The 750+ TLD coverage means Gandi can source ccTLDs and new gTLDs that budget registrars often cannot. For a European business registering country-specific domains across 10+ markets, single-registrar management has real operational value.

Customers who registered pre-2023 and are evaluating whether to stay. If you registered domains when free email was included, the post-acquisition Gandi is a different value proposition. The DNS infrastructure is still good. If you were primarily using the email inclusion, you now need to either pay for Gandi's email add-on or migrate to a dedicated email provider.

Price-sensitive customers registering .com/.net domains in volume should compare alternatives. Cloudflare Registrar, Porkbun, and Namecheap offer significantly lower renewal rates with comparable DNS infrastructure.

The Verdict

Gandi's 25-year track record and technical infrastructure make it a legitimate choice for domain registration and DNS hosting. LiveDNS Anycast, DNSSEC, free WHOIS privacy, API access, and 750+ TLD coverage represent genuine value — particularly for developers who want to automate DNS management with an EU-based provider. The Your.Online acquisition damaged the brand's earned trust, and the renewal pricing on common TLDs is above market rate. Approached on the merits of its current product rather than its history, Gandi is a technically strong registrar with pricing that requires scrutiny, and a corporate trajectory that warrants monitoring.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Gandi really eliminate free email with domains?

Yes. In 2023, after the Your.Online acquisition, Gandi ended its longstanding offer of two free mailboxes per domain. The Standard mailbox price increased from €0.35/month to €3.99/month per mailbox — a 1040% increase. For customers who had registered multi-year domains expecting free email for the duration, this was a material retroactive change. Email hosting is now a paid add-on, separately priced.

Is Gandi still a good domain registrar post-acquisition?

For domain registration and DNS hosting specifically, the technical product remains strong — LiveDNS Anycast, DNSSEC, free WHOIS privacy, API access, and 750+ TLD coverage are all intact. The decline is in value for money on .com/.net renewals (now among the higher-priced in the market) and in the erosion of brand trust that came with the 2023 changes. For pure DNS and domain management at fair pricing, it competes. For bundled domain-and-email at a single low price, the 2023-era Gandi no longer exists.

How does Gandi LiveDNS compare to Cloudflare DNS?

Gandi LiveDNS is a competent Anycast DNS service with DNSSEC and full API access — suitable for most domain management scenarios. Cloudflare DNS is faster globally, includes DDoS protection, and sits within a broader developer ecosystem (Workers, R2, Pages). For performance-critical DNS at high query volumes, Cloudflare outperforms. For customers who want EU-controlled DNS without routing traffic through a US CDN, Gandi LiveDNS is a reasonable alternative, with the LiveDNS Premium tier (Cloudflare-backed) available for customers who want the best of both.

Does Gandi support DNSSEC?

Yes. DNSSEC is supported on all domains managed through Gandi LiveDNS, included at no additional cost. For domains transferred to external nameservers, DNSSEC is managed by uploading DS records (provided by the external DNS provider) through the Gandi dashboard. Zone signing is handled automatically for domains using LiveDNS.

How many TLDs does Gandi support?

Gandi supports over 750 TLDs including generic TLDs (.com, .net, .org), country-code TLDs (.fr, .de, .uk, .nl, .eu), and new gTLDs (.app, .io, .shop, .photography, and many others). Pricing varies significantly by TLD — niche and premium extensions can cost considerably more than popular generics. A full price list is published at gandi.net/en/domain.