API Automated Batch Processing

Use of our API provides a convenient way to integrate with our services. We take steps to ensure that all of our customers have equal and fair access to our API. One of the steps we take is to broadly classify API use into two categories:

• Standard Use
  Standard API use is the most common usage scenario and can broadly be defined to include any API call that was directly triggered by a human action.
• Batch Use
  Batch API use occurs when software programs make automated and often times repetitive API calls.

In order to help facilitate equal API access to all customers and to help ensure that the actions of some users do not impact other users' ability to use the API, we have created two API access URIs: /api and /apibatch. Batch use must ONLY use /apibatch for all API calls.The batch API supports all standard API calls and works exactly the same - you simply use /apibatch as the base URI.

It is important to note that executing batch API calls in the standard API violates our terms of service as it adversely impacts other customers who are only utilizing the API for standard use. We closely monitor API use and proactively limit batch use in /api. The automated monitoring we employ on /api basically makes it useless for batch processing, so there really is no point in attempting to violate this policy - no advantage is gained by executing batch processing in /api - batch processing calls to /api will be stopped in near real-time. In addition to there being no advantage, doing so will in all likelihood result in API and/or account suspension.

In addition to our real-time monitoring of /api, we also employ additional automated monitoring to help detect violations of this policy. This monitoring includes, but is not limited to:

• Activity causing impact to system performance
  
• System response or connection issues
• Multiple repeated API calls (e.g., multiple attempts of the same operation for the same domain such as multiple transactions for creating domain names)
• A high ratio of "unsuccessful" to "successful" API responses

With this API use policy we aim to support customers whose business model involves more extensive use of automated batch processing, without adversely impacting other customers. Please contact us if you have any questions regarding this API use policy.