Renew domains before end of September to avoid additional fees.
It’s that time of year again — time for VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and other registries to increase their wholesale price of domain names.
VeriSign’s wholesale prices for .com and .net increase on October 1, 2008. The new .com price will be $6.86. With ICANN’s 20 cent fee that means the minimum cost to your registrar is $7.06. .Net prices will be $4.23 before ICANN’s fee.
Earlier today Domain Name Wire wrote about GoDaddy’s latest price increase on .net and .org domains, which have shot up about 30% to $13.19 including the ICANN fee.
Almost all of the registries are increasing prices, and eNom sent out a notice today that its prices will increase 50 cents effective September 30. You can expect other registrars to follow.
It’s amazing that the wholesale price of domains is increasing while domain registrations are ballooning. Most of the registry costs are fixed, and the cost to manage each incremental domain goes down as more are registered. But don’t blame VeriSign, Public Interest Registry, and the other registries. They have a monopoly on their extensions, and if ICANN is going to give them free reign to raise prices each year, they may as well max it out. Registrar complaints that they’ll have to pass on the costs to customers fall on deaf years since big registrars such as GoDaddy have pricing that doesn’t have any correlation to wholesale cost. .Net prices, anyone?
You can beat the price increase by renewing your domains before October. If you have domains you know you’ll hold onto for many years, go ahead and renew them at today’s rates for multiple years.
This is great advise Andrew! Rebel.com is making the same recommendation to all of our customers, renew now and for multiple years on domains you plan to hold long term and maximize your ROI. We won’t be raising prices until the registry price increases have taken effect and we are currently offering consolidation help and aggressive pricing to anyone looking for alternative solutions.
Rick Schwartz warned us.
The godaddy increase won’t really affect small business and private owners who only have a few domains and I guess there aren’t enough of us large portfolio holders to make a big enough stink to keep prices down.
And it’s not cheap or easy to move 3000 names out of godaddy that are all categorized, forwarded etc.
So, I guess we have to suck it up or move our domains but make sure you compare registrars. NOT ALL are created equal. Some domainers like low prices, some like customer service, some like a great UI etc.
Thanks for the excellent advice Andrew, I had no idea. I guess it’s time to do some pruning !
Like with basic economic concepts, with increase in price, people will run to suppliers offering cheaper prices, and i make this statement with 1and1 in mind. Alot of people bash 1and1 on namepros and other forums, but with Godaddy increasing prices across the board, 1and1’s domain price of $6 looks even MORE attractive, and GD increasing .net + .org prices will definitely help 1and1(and cheap+ dependable registrars too) make more $$$.
Be careful over at 1and1. I have never heard anything good about them.
They don’t like large portfolio holders and will make transfers out difficult.
I will pay the extra money at godaddy because of their phone customer service (email customer service gives bad info) and because of their user interface and ease of transfers.
Price is not the most important thing.
You get what you pay for as they say.
kemji – keep in mind that 1&1 loses money on every .com domain you register. They’re planning to make it up on selling you other products.
Andrew: You said “big registrars such as GoDaddy have pricing that doesn’t have any correlation to wholesale cost. .Net prices, anyone?”
Actually, OpenSRS uses a very different pricing model than other registrars.
We break out the Registry Fee, ICANN Fee, and our Domain Management Fee separately for maximum transparency. We pass on the actual registry fee and ICANN fee for gTLDs which means our price for .net is considerably lower.
We also throw in DNS Management and WHOIS Privacy as part of the management fee as we think all domains should have those capabilities and they shouldn’t be looked at as premium services as other registrars do.
Thanks Ken. I know that GoDaddy has fought the increases in the past. Several registrars do have prices that correlate, charging less for .net.
It occurred to me that Godaddy didn’t raise the price of their .com domains which I assume is their big seller. For this reason, I am assuming they decided to raise the price of .net and .org domains which have a higher profit margin to allow them to keep the .com at the same price as others companies raise theirs.
Zach, it remains to be seen if GoDaddy will raise its price when VeriSign raises it next month. But I suspect that it will keep it at $9.99 (really 10.19 with fees). After all, it raised the price on .com $1.00 when VeriSign raised prices only 42 cents last time.
As a domain reseller, we’ve certainly are feelling the effects for the price changes. Our customers have had the luxury of receiving a $6.95 new regisration and transfer rate for a long time. I find it’s defintely one of the cheapest domain name registration places in the industry, without having to pay any sort of membership fee. Thanks you Verisign, I hope this buys the execs a new G5….