i2Coalition Member Spotlight: Porkbun

Boasting “an oddly satisfying experience” since 2014, domain name registrar Porkbun wears its Pacific-Northwest vibe on its sleeve. Originally founded to sell domain names on behalf of parent registry Top Level Design, Porkbun has since evolved as it sold the top-level domains and is no longer vertically integrated. Porkbun continues to partner with many registries such as Verisign, Public Interest Registry (PIR), and Identity Digital to deliver and support a wide range of TLDs to its customers—from .abogado to .zone. We caught up with Porkbun CEO Ray King to discuss authenticity, collaboration, and where that memorable company name came from.

i2Coalition: Can you give us the elevator pitch for Porkbun?
Ray King: Imagine domain registration that’s actually enjoyable – that’s Porkbun. We deliver industry-low prices with genuinely real, live phone and chat support, because we’re the only low-margin registrar brave (or crazy!) enough to offer it. Our pig butt logo isn’t just for laughs; it perfectly sums us up: we take your business seriously, but we definitely don’t take ourselves too seriously. What started as a labor of love, a clever side hustle, is now our full-blown, main obsession, dedicated to giving you an oddly satisfying experience.

i2Coalition: We must ask… where did the name “Porkbun” come from?
RK: Let’s just say that a certain major registrar established that “anything goes” as far as naming conventions in our industry. So, once we had decided to start a registrar we looked through the .com domains we had available and “porkbun.com” jumped out as something totally unique, highly brandable, and just plain fun. 

The biggest registrar in the world has a bizarre name, and everyone else is derivative of “dots” and “names”. Ten years later, our brand name inadvertently reflects our ambitions: we have our eyes set on the top, not everyone else. 

i2Coalition: How has the rapid advancement of AI impacted your service offerings or internal operations?
RK: I believe we were the first registrar to integrate AI-powered search as an optional toggle for domain discovery. I think that, like everyone, we are still experimenting and learning with this rapidly changing landscape. It really excites our team and inspires us to constantly reframe what we hope to do with the technology. 

i2Coalition: Why did your team find it important to join the i2Coalition?
RK: Quite frankly, we don’t have time for the necessary advocacy, which i2Coalition excels at. It is not something that we as a small company can dedicate resources to as our focus is on building the strongest and best business we can. And while we stay involved with Internet governance topics generally, we don’t have the same bandwidth as legacy providers in the space. So for us, it is about efficiency, working collaboratively within our industry on matters that impact us all, and growing a healthy Internet as the backbone of our business.

i2Coalition: Which i2Coalition initiatives connect most deeply with your team’s ethos?
RK: Porkbun has two core values that are unique to us: Deliver a mind-blowing experience, and Infuse the world with fun. 

I don’t think those are an exact match to i2Coalition – not that you can’t have fun, we’re excited to attend more of the networking events—but to my prior point I believe the strength and alignment is that working with i2Coalition is an efficient way for us to be involved in industry-wide advocacy, education, and collaboration so we can spend the majority of our energy delivering a mind-blowing experience in our unique, fun Porkbun way. 

More broadly we are a highly collaborative organization with a lot of wiki values in our blood. “Be a builder”, “Real People”, “Transparency”, and “Work on what interests you” are all values that are a part of our ethos that I see reflected in i2Coalition. 

i2Coalition: Where does government policy interface with your work on a daily basis?
RK: There is a lot of important legislation that makes our business better and our customers safer. It is also an incredibly dynamic and evolving landscape and not all legislation is created equally, is feasible for small businesses, or actually accomplishes its stated goals. It can be a challenge to ensure we are responsive to legislation in all its stages, especially in the early formative stages when our perspective would be valuable in determining outcomes that impact our business and customers. Once again, this motivates us to support collaborative and impactful advocacy via i2Coalition.