Massive price hike for Uniregistry domains will be very bad for business.
A big shoe has dropped.
DomainIncite reported today that Uniregistry (the registry, not registrar) is getting ready to jack up the prices on many of its domain names. Bigly.
.Hosting and .juegos are going up from about $10-$20 retail to about $300. Other domains will also see price increases.
It’s obvious why, but you can read Kevin’s article for Schilling’s comments.
Here’s the thing with new TLD pricing: registry operators can increase prices as much as they want with just six months’ notice.
Then, after that, they can increase with just 30 days’ notice if they don’t increase the price more than they did in the previous 12 months’.
They have to give this notice to registrars. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, there’s no requirement that registrars pass this information on to registrants. The original intent of the notice, I believe, was to give registrants a chance to renew for up to a ten-year term before the price hike.
Although I expected some price increases, I didn’t expect anything like this. In fact, in its applications, Uniregistry said it planned to enter into a contractual agreement to not increase its prices for five years. (Thanks for the reminder, George.)
There are several problems here, beyond the obvious “wow these domains costs a lot more.”
First, many registrars show the first year price for domains followed by “renews at”. Are they going to have to honors that first-year renewal price that they told the customer? This could be a big issue. I suspect registrars will cease selling Uniregistry names if they are worried about this happening in the future.
Second, when friends have asked me in the past about buying these new domains, I’ve sometimes told them about the price hike potential. I’ve stopped giving that warning lately, but now? I feel obligated to inform them, especially for Uniregistry domains.
Third, this will wipe out domain investors that funded the early part of new TLD registrations. So, does that leave people actually using the domains as registrants? Nope. I don’t buy that argument. I think it leaves you with people that are defensively registering domains to protect their large brands. If I’m a small business, am I going to pay a few hundred dollars for a domain or find an alternative for $15 or less per year? Most of the time, I’ll opt for the latter.
I should caution that this doesn’t mean other new TLD operators will follow suit. But all new TLDs will be guilty by association.
For the good of all new TLDs, it would help if this increase was charged only to new registrations and the old ones were grandfathered, like what Donuts did. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
This is bad. Really bad.
Update: Here are some other domains getting a big bump. I’m basing this on some retail numbers, so this will depend on your registrar:
.Hosting, .juegos appx $300
.Audio, .hiphop, .flowers, .guitars, .property, .blackfriday $100
Also, here’s how much it costs to run a registry.
Let the calendar be marked. Anyone investing in new gTLDs past March 7, 2017 has to be considered crazy! There were ample warnings before that date, too. How much more evidence does anyone need?
Let me repost what I said on the other blog, namely:
If you go to the .AUDIO new gTLD application:
https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1908
(click on “Download Public Portion of Application”) it says:
“18.C.2 Cost Structure and Increases
Uniregistry will offer flat-rate, affordable pricing. It intends to offer certain co-marketing rebates and incentives to all registrars, some of which may be returned to registrants as introductory or bulk registration discounts at the discretion of the registrar.
While not a ʺcommunityʺ application, Uniregistry views its prospective domain registrants as a community to be served, and not exploited. Uniregistry intends to make a contractual commitment to registrants and their registrars not to increase registry prices above cost of inflation for the first five years after launch of the registry. Our initial pricing model allows registry prices to find a market value that may be substantially below our projections, which are based on conservative assumptions of registration volume, rather than locking in a captive market with a deceptively low initial registration cost.
Uniregistry does not believe that registry fees should rise when the costs of other technology services have uniformly trended downward, simply because a registry operator believes it can extract higher profit from its base of registrants. While competition in registrar services by ICANN caused an initial and substantial drop in retail domain registration prices, the fees for registry services have increased over the same span of time. Those increases have not been justified by increased Internet traffic, and thus zone server operational cost, since the cost the underlying technology has trended down while performance has increased. We do not believe registry fees should follow a different trend than comparable technological services. Uniregistryʹs management includes individuals who participated in anti-trust litigation which was brought to combat increases in existing TLD registry charges they believed to be unjustified, and we have no intention of following that path. We believe our best opportunity for prosperity is to offer a reliable, differentiated TLD which will attract increasing numbers of registrants.”
Has it been 5 years already since launch? Doesn’t look like it! .audio appears to have launched in the summer of 2014.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to check his other new gTLD applications to ICANN.
Similar statements were made on blogs, e.g.
http://tldinvestors.com/2012/07/uniregistry-has-no-plans-for-premium-auctions.html
“Our prices are fixed and only indexed to inflation after 5 years.”
It’s so sad for those who relied on those commitments, and are now about to see their investments flushed down the toilet.
Folks like myself strongly argued for pricing caps, etc. to protect registrants. ICANN wasn’t listening, but was too busy on travel junkets, and hiring ‘consultants’ to justify pay increases, etc.
I feel bad for the people who are and will lose money. No need of it.
I am assuming this is why Rick is back talking about new gTLD’s again, but on Twitter. He probably knew this was coming.
Sorry, had no idea. But my business timing has always been pretty darn good. 🙂
Congrats for being right, Rick!
Your timing and vision are unbelievably good Rick.
Thanks to your inspiration I have earned plenty of money like most domain investors who listened to the domainking who preached his message without trying to sell people anything.
gtld’s are going to become .pro and .tel USELESS / members only. with no investors they are relics.
New gTLD owners got Trumped!
The problem here is that he is a visionnaire and if he says this today, it means that other registries will probably be forced to do the same. See what’s coming? “Long life to .COM?”
😉
Please ! The only vision Franky has ever had, is his Belly Button. JAS 3/7/17
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former ( Rockefeller I.B.E.C. Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed C.B.O.E. Commodity Hedge Strategist) (UseBiz.com)
Frank was a visionary when preaching dotcom and writing his sevenmile blog that he has now taken offline…
Frank is no longer a domainer, he is a businessman. He does not care about domainers. He will preach whatever will make him money and the sheep will follow those ‘bahhhhhhhhhhd investments’. You honestly think if he didn’t own some of these horrible extensions he’d be telling people to buy them? .blackfriday??? One day a year. It is a USA only thing. How many registrations could you possible expect on an extension like that? What moron is going to buy that and hold trying to resell it?
Hello Andrew,
(Franky Google/Alphabets Poster boy) does what Google/Alphabet tells him to do. We are not surprised. This is all part of the Google/Alphabet S.E.M. Agenda to add more barriers to Online Business Expansion. JAS 3/7/17
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former ( Rockefeller I.B.E.C. Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed C.B.O.E. Commodity Hedge Strategist) (UseBiz.com)
This is what happens when you are losing money. Instead of saying, I’ll lower the prices so more people will buy them, they raise the prices, because nobody wants those gtlds anyway.
I don’t think lowering prices would have helped. There’s just not enough demand. He will make more money by increasing them 10x.
Frank already lowered prices and it did not help.
Increasing prices is him trying to save his ass. Period.
Looks like .com is a safe harbor.
This is the death of new TLDS as an investment.
All domain investors in the extensions Frank is raising prices to astronomical levels just got hosed and all their time and effort has been for nothing.
.
Never watch what people say, always watch what people do.
Frank is buying dotcoms and has been buying dotcoms all thru the new TLD mania…
.
Dotcom is the king.
Listen to advice from people who are NOT trying to sell you something.
.
He has been buying .com’s on namejet this whole time, and paying well over wholesale for them.
The solution is to score the registrars and refistries independently, giving bad score to registrars that don’t. Notice customers about the price increase and avoiding registration of tlds of the registrars that will increase them too much , it’s like you buy a burger today for 10 usd and tomorrow it will cost you 1000 usd , this is even more volatile that bitcoin, this is not ok not only for investors but for ends users too.
I don’t think scoring them will achieve anything. Once they adjust the renewal from $10 to $300 you are screwed no matter what the rating or what they promised in the past. Essentially the registry just took back the name…bye bye to your supposed “investment”.
People would be better off simply not buying new tlds, that is is at the obvious conclusion.
GTLD = Good To Lose Dollars
I guess .com was the clear winner overall!
So was this the plan Frank, shove this sh*t down our throats, then jack the price, while others are selling for 99 cents.
Domainers will not react in kind to such actions that is for sure.
.click, and .link are dropping in droves, I think they think they will make the extensions more valuable by charging more, what happend to that big Chinese contract?
I think the Domain King should take a bow right about now, he proved all you wrong, he saw what you all were.
Thanks to George K
If you go to the .AUDIO new gTLD application:
https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1908
(click on “Download Public Portion of Application”) it says:
“18.C.2 Cost Structure and Increases
Uniregistry will offer flat-rate, affordable pricing. It intends to offer certain co-marketing rebates and incentives to all registrars, some of which may be returned to registrants as introductory or bulk registration discounts at the discretion of the registrar.
While not a ʺcommunityʺ application, Uniregistry views its prospective domain registrants as a community to be served, and not exploited. Uniregistry intends to make a contractual commitment to registrants and their registrars not to increase registry prices above cost of inflation for the first five years after launch of the registry. Our initial pricing model allows registry prices to find a market value that may be substantially below our projections, which are based on conservative assumptions of registration volume, rather than locking in a captive market with a deceptively low initial registration cost.
Uniregistry does not believe that registry fees should rise when the costs of other technology services have uniformly trended downward, simply because a registry operator believes it can extract higher profit from its base of registrants. While competition in registrar services by ICANN caused an initial and substantial drop in retail domain registration prices, the fees for registry services have increased over the same span of time. Those increases have not been justified by increased Internet traffic, and thus zone server operational cost, since the cost the underlying technology has trended down while performance has increased. We do not believe registry fees should follow a different trend than comparable technological services. Uniregistryʹs management includes individuals who participated in anti-trust litigation which was brought to combat increases in existing TLD registry charges they believed to be unjustified, and we have no intention of following that path. We believe our best opportunity for prosperity is to offer a reliable, differentiated TLD which will attract increasing numbers of registrants.”
Has it been 5 years already since launch? Doesn’t look like it! .audio appears to have launched in the summer of 2014.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to check his other new gTLD applications to ICANN.
Similar statements were made on blogs, e.g.
http://tldinvestors.com/2012/07/uniregistry-has-no-plans-for-premium-auctions.html
“Our prices are fixed and only indexed to inflation after 5 years.”
It’s so sad for those who relied on those commitments, and are now about to see their investments flushed down the toilet.
Folks like myself strongly argued for pricing caps, etc. to protect registrants. ICANN wasn’t listening, but was too busy on travel junkets, and hiring ‘consultants’ to justify pay increases, etc.
Well, that being the case, I guess I will be dropping a bunch of uniregistry domains rather than renewing them.
Nor will I be in the mood to touch them again as the well is now toxic.
From this point forward everyone needs to ensure they’ve disabled auto-renew on their nTLDs or they’ll be in for a shock when they get their credit card statement.
Must be a lot of investors out there feeling they just got taken for a schmuck
Fortunately whilst the bloggers were keeping their advertisers happy at namepros new gTLDs came with a health warning
Some domain bloggers promoted new gTLD’s and still do.
They’ll keep promoting for along as they are being paid, expect that to end in the next few years though. Once domainers have exited they won’t bother just like .mobi doesn’t bother promoting to domainers any more.
I’m still the proud owner of NONE of these new extensions.
I never believed in them from the start.
I always thought it was just another ploy to make MORE money off the domainer.
But it sure has been very interesting watching all this play out the past few years from the bleachers.
nTLD program is not dead at all, if other ntld operators don’t follow Uniregistry’s way. Better for them, one competitor for domainers money is off, people will buy more their strings. It is “win-win” situation: Uniregistry will make more money in his questioned way, others will make more money just being ethical and long-term sighted.
Donuts do not make this mistake.
Frank hurt more than his extensions, he hurt his brand, which is his likeness.
What for $100k? Sell a car
Donuts isn’t in a position to comment on a competitor’s pricing decisions. Speaking for ourselves, however, we have no plans to increase prices for existing registrants — this is not part of our business plan. We voluntarily entered into agreements with our registrars that dramatically limits our ability to increase prices for existing registrants. Case in point, in the only instance to date of an upward price adjustment (effective last October 1), we increased our prices for only unregistered names and exempted existing registrations.
We understand the negative impact that unexpected price increases have on domain investors, and we want to underline again how much we appreciate the value that domain investors bring to Donuts and to the industry.
Maybe you should tell us about those agreements Andee? Saying Donuts has “no plans” to increase prices doesn’t sound very certain, I’m betting uniregistry had no plans a few months ago either.
If registries want to be taken seriously they need to put out a binding guarantee on price increases, something that that would also be binding in the event that the string is sold. Without that anything can happen as registries search to increase profitability. Their contract with Icann allows them to increase prices to any level they like, at the moment that is all registrants have to go by, an opened ended contract
Uniregistry made similar claims of no price increases a while back so what gets said on blogs doesn’t mean much.
A lot of ntld’s will follow suit, it is a better option than going bust.
Keep drinking that nTLD kool-aid, Sergey.
Thanks Mark, but I prefer my home made drink made of my ntld end user sales.
While the price increase will be bad, leading to numerous drops, the key points to consider are these…
—
“He added that the higher base fee gives Uniregistry more flexibility to provide periodic discounts…”
“…Between renewals promotions and pricing promotions, a lot of the effects of the price increases will be moot,” Schilling said.
Because the new prices don’t kick in until September, registrants are able to lock in pricing at current levels by renewing for up to 10 years.”
—
…which provides an idea of intent.
Bump up prices in September with the aim of forcing multi-year registrations in hope of taking advantage of “renewal promotions” which might be as low as the original pricing, or close to.
This is simply a “Smoke & Mirrors” approach using high prices to create a perception of value with the promise of promotions to maintain pre-existing customers while encouraging multi-year registrations to allow them the security of having time to wait for a “renewal promotion”
The drawback is this…
A domain being bumped from $20 to $100 that someone is willing to keep for the higher price provides the registry zero benefit if it means 4 other domains are dropped…and it is far more likely that 4 domains dropping is being optimistic.
To minimize this, the registry would be hoping for a multi-year registration on the domain kept to offset their initial loss in the hopes that more $100 registrations occur in the following year/s.
This is not a good tactic.
In a marketplace with a range of options, people can choose to shop elsewhere.
The only people likely to buy at a higher price are those already committed and their staying is dependent on how invested they already are.
So it comes down to one thing…
“promotions”
…how often…
…and how cheap.
The people worst of will be those who renew for 10 years out thinking it buys them time. The future renewal price will kill of any interest from domainers, and will kill off most of the enduser interest as well. People used to do it with .tv premiums and it just became hot potato with nobody wanting to buy whilst the owner is ever more desperate to sell as a renewal payment nears.
Best just to drop, the investment is already a sunk cost. It’s over.
So is that a con schilling trying to get a decade of cash flow upfront to buy more .coms at namejet ?
Hello Dan,
You hit the nail on the head with this observation = ” So is that a con schilling trying to get a decade of cash flow upfront to buy more .coms at namejet ? ”
From day one Frankys mastering of leveraging and Hosing the masses to his benefit, has been most evident for the Strategic Thinkers. Why do you think Google/Alphabet has a very lucrative contract with this master manipulator that supports their cause?JAS 3/8/17
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former ( Rockefeller I.B.E.C. Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed C.B.O.E. Commodity Hedge Strategist) (UseBiz.com)
Frank has posted before claiming that high pricing works. So I guess he’ll find out with this.
The ripple effect to other registries will probably be to make otherwise less cautious people be a lot more cautious about registering any of them at all. Certainly me, and I’m glad I only have a very small number of them now.
.Com is still king and probably always will be.
Only a few new “Keyword + TLD” (potential) gems are that – potential gems – but not if the pricing becomes ridiculous. Maybe one or a few whole TLDs. And the good ones have not even achieved and realized “gem” status yet, either, so all they are is potential gems that may never really arrive. I like the ones I have, but I’ll dump them if this happens unless there is a very compelling economic reason not to.
Actually he has constantly said do not buy high premium renewal, he is on tape saying that.
Actually he is on tape many times saying do not buy high premium renewals, I guess he doesn’t want people to buy his extensions.
Great work here, George. In the Domain Incite article, I was glad that Frank didn’t sugarcoat the situation. From the very beginning, this was always a pure money grab on the part of ICANN while justifying it by promoting a public demand that never existed. Domainers who were late to the legacy domains’ party jumped on board, but there are too many extensions for them to cover and if they don’t see a profit in the aftermarket soon they’ll be gone. This is a classic Catch-22 situation.
Demand exists, the problem has been implementation (premium prices and especially premium renewals) which are turn offs for the average end-user.
Those end-users able to afford such high registrations and renews are better served waiting for the second round of gross when they can apply for their bows extension to run.
Pricing needs to be geared towards the low and mid level end-user.
By cutting out this demographic, real world use fails so there is a lack of representation, why buy if no one appears to be using.
As far as too many extensions to cover, you don’t need to cover every extension, you need to cover what you are good at promoting.
I thought people stopped listening to Frank Shilling about 10 years ago when he was relevant. He has been a used car salesmen the last 5 years.
Listen to Rick Swartz, ignore the rest.
Time to dump and run…
I pitty the corporations that just pay whatever invoices they are issued. Reminds me of the recent story on the hosting bill at batteries.com.
It looks like domain gang is trying to deflect from this story by publishing crap like he does with escrow, and dnforum, failure theo turd
I hope I am wrong and only saying bs, but:
the plan of registrars and registries now may be to charge renewals first to unwary registrants with activated auto-renewals.
So the name of the game may be: charge super bills first and have customers running after you for refunds.
So instead of registries and registrars boosting their ass to do a sale,
you have customers boosting their ass to undo a sale.
It may no longer be a game of getting new registrants, but of milking the existing ones for all they are worth.
I guess if you are going to play stabbing your customers with bills, you might as well stab them with huge bills.
That may explain huge increase in prices.
I guess this one coming couldn’t be seen even by Rick himself :-/
This seems like a uniregistry problem more than anyone else.
The way i see it, this nTLD space has been a disaster for Frank.
There are 4 real winners at the moment, .XYZ, .CLUB, F4, Radix,
And 3 others, Donuts, Rightside, MMX all have decent momentum and potential.
Is F4 really a success? They sell their domains for $1 or less and through registrars that make even less on markup. Maybe they sell a few premium domains once in a while, but is it a sustainable business model? I own quite a bit of F4 domains myself but I’m skeptical if the TLDs will survive in the long term.
So Frank thinks it’s fun to skirt the rules by jacking up prices 300 percent to force people to drop their domains, or pay multi year renewals…
Class act right there… class act extortion.
Is this the new norm for gtlds, uniregistry, north sound should be banned from every applying from a gtld again.
Please file a complaint at icann, let’s at least causes a paperwork headache for them.
Given the massive expected domain name deletions, Uniregistry shall henceforth be referred to as Punyregistry. 🙂
Sounds like another strategy is playing behind the scenes. DomainNameSales is maybe setting up to sell its registry/registrar business?
Your personal data and valuable dot coms are likely part of the package . . .
And you guys thought Frank Shilling was the champion of Domainers (lol) All those knuckleheads listening to his speech at Namescon, should of been in there hotel room with some “lady of the night” instead, better use of your time(lol)
I would like to just confirm that Schilling is buying domains on namejet like crazy.
He has been since the day he called .com the AM dial, he pays crazy prices, puts his top bid out there, and forces you to outbid, I say start bidding him up guys, make him really pay.
He is just using all our data to compete against us, time to make it hard for him.
That is unfortunate for the owners of Uniregistry domain names. I know there was one registry that as of two days ago went the opposite direction reduced their high priced TLD names between $500 – $1000 and made them a lot cheaper somewhere between $10 – $50.
As we have just learned, just as easily as they can put prices down, they can later put them up and under ICANN rules the registrars are not even obliged to inform the registrants of the price increase.
By his actions what Frank Schilling has done has been to open our eyes as to the flimsy regulations regarding price increases with these new gtlds, something most of us were unaware of, until now that is. So we must at least thank Frank for that.
And whilst it is Uniregistry today that is putting up renewal prices by up to 3000%, despite any brave words by other registries in this new gtld business, as we have learned there is nothing to stop them too putting up prices without any upper cap, next week, next month, next year. Who knows?
It’s the uncertainty of it all.
While I understand what you are saying. Registries still have to worry about one thing, and that is their reputation. For a company to set high prices, lower them and then set them high again is asking to be shot. And, registrars with so much choice have the power to dictate what happens.
I can live with small increases here and there. But in this case, I believe that Uniregistry has ruined their reputation. But I don’t think you can shine the light on all of the registries because of the actions of one.
I do hope that Uniregistry looked interally for savings before pulling the rug from domain owners.
Help us All Dear Jesus!!! LOL
And btw, it is Frank SHILLing not Schilling…
Uniregistry has been trying to do too much. The registry premium strategy was all over the place. First they registered domains themselves, later they attempted to market them as never before released registry premium domains etc. This IMO has damaged the reputation of Uniregistry and more importantly the integrity.
The economics of this price increase is one strategy and from a pure economic perspective may make sense. Personally I believe it damages the industry and puts TLDs in a bad light. Basically Uniregistry is admitting that they had no clue of what they were doing when they launched and more or less believed nTLDs would explode!!
Another and possibly more feasible strategy could also be to get rid of the registry back-end and move all your TLDs to a registry operator who can take much greater advantage of the economies of scale and pass on the savings. Uniregistry simply doesn’t have the volume as their TLD-Selection was simply poor. As such they possibly can’t take advantage of the economies of scale as much as other larger registries can.
For those who are critical of Frank Schilling and have domain names registered at Punyregistry, take a hard look at section 2.15 of their registration agreement.
“2.15 Revocation
We, ****in our sole discretion****, reserve the right to deny, ****cancel****, suspend, ****transfer**** or modify any domain name registration to correct a mistake, protect the integrity and stability of our operations and of any applicable registry, to comply with any applicable laws, government rules, or requirements, requests of law enforcement, in compliance with any dispute resolution process, to address fraudulent payments or identity theft, to avoid any liability, civil or criminal or *****in response to abusive, threatening or harassing communications directed to us or any of our employees or agents in the scope of their employment.***** You agree that we shall not be liable to you for loss or damages that may result from our refusal to register or cancel, suspend, transfer or modify your domain name registration under this section.”
(emphasis added) So, my reading of this is that, if in their “sole discretion” they don’t like what you’re saying about them, and deem it “harassing”, they reserve the right to cancel your domain, and you agreed that they shall not be liable for that decision.
The new TLD Song! Don’t piss your money away on new, sh*t TLDs folks ! Take a step back and reflect.
Ask an old domain investor if you want good domain investing
advice. That’s the best advice you will ever get….trust me.
Stop thinking you are so young, or smart, or rich and know better or whatever an listen to old, hard investor who has already lost six or seven figures learning how to be good at this game. Do what they are doing not what folks on NamePros or your neighbor is doing. Wake up ; Save money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViIDVwoJUQU&feature=youtu.be
Could this also be a way to encourage end user usage of now registered and unavailable nTLDs that are held for investment purposes?
An investor would always be unhappy with rising costs. However, nTLDs were in part branded as a way to get great SLDs that were not available in .com or other existing TLDs. In general, many good nTLDs were picked up very quickly. Thus, some endusers may now find their chances to land a good nTLD improved. Investors have more incentive to move domains that now have higher holding costs.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I recall many premium Uniregistry domains were put up at auction with no reserve and regular renewal fees previously. Also, many were simply released to registration:
https://domainnamewire.com/2016/10/25/uniregistry-just-released-3-5-million-previously-reserved-domain-names/
Hello Andrew,
We have been warning for some time now of the impending consolidation of most Domain Industry Regs into a few left standing. The Fundamentals of selling non legacy URLs boils down to selling into a market that has No Appreciable Present or Future Demand . Rick Schwartz has been quite clear over the years on this Fundamental Fact. International Demand is almost Non existent for Non Legacy URLS. JAS 3/9/17
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former ( Rockefeller I.B.E.C. Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed C.B.O.E. Commodity Hedge Strategist) (UseBiz.com)
The biggest losers are those that developed intensive websites. They’re stuck. They should be the ones rewarded, not bent over.