At least one registrar is increasing the price by 76% as new TLD company hikes price of brand protection service.
Top level domain name provider Donuts will significantly increase the price of its Domains Protected Marks List (DPML) on January 1, 2017.
DPML enables trademark holders to block certain second level strings across its entire portfolio of nearly 200 top level domain names. Trademark holders use the service to prevent cybersquatting on their brand names.
The company previously revealed that an increase would take place next year, but did not say how much.
While the company still declines to say how much the wholesale price is or what it will be next year, domain name registrar Hexonet recently informed customers of the upcoming price hike.
Hexonet currently charges $2,500 to its highest tier customers for a five-year DPML block. That price will increase to $4,400 in January, a whopping 76% hike.
One-year renewals at Hexonet will increase from $500 to $880 in its best price tier. That’s also a 76% increase.
That comes out to $4.40 per domain per year assuming 200 TLDs.
In response to an inquiry from Domain Name Wire about the price increase, Donuts VP of Communications Mason Cole stated:
Donuts has increased the wholesale price of its legacy DPML service in order to align the benefits of the service with marketplace value, and to reflect the wider protection offered by the addition of new domains to the Donuts portfolio, now totaling almost 200. The service provides trademark holders with an efficient and cost effective way to protect their trademarked terms in all Donuts domains without the expensive and laborious process of defensive registration, and remains much more cost effective and valuable than those of competitors, which offer a nearly identical service for far fewer extensions. Retail pricing is at the discretion of each registrar making the service available to its customers. As previously announced, brand owners may renew their subscriptions at current pricing before December 31.
So Donuts charges companies thousands of dollars for something that costs virtually nothing to implement or administer (it’s just a basic text filter), in order to prevent Donuts profiting from those company’s trademarks. Not only that, but now they’re increasing the price. That’s really disgusting.
Donuts created DPML so trademark holders would have a cost-effective alternative to defensive registration. We’re pleased that it has been lauded by the trademark community as a useful and affordable tool. Appreciate that you have your own perspective on what might be involved operationally, but for the benefit, it’s very fairly priced.