[2] In 2012, ICANN announced it would be expanding the range of domain extensions to further organize the Internet with new TLD's being requested by multiple parties.

[3] Six companies including Radix, Tucows, Namecheap, I-Registry Ltd., WhatBox?, and Donuts (Bitter Frostbite, LLC) filed applications for this TLD.

[4][5][6] Initially, it was a joint venture between Radix, Tucows, and Namecheap after they won the rights to .online in a private auction in 2014.

The TLD was the first to register over 38,000 domains in the first 24 hours, making it the largest new gTLD launch of its time.

[8] Based on an internal analysis by Radix, 65% of developed .online domains are in use by SMBs, while the company had generated over $13M in total revenue from the gTLD as of May 2020[update].