Registrar is happy about grandfathering, but still has issues with Uniregistry price hikes.
This morning, Uniregistry announced some changes to its planned price hikes that take effect in September.
Most notably, existing registrations in nine of the domain names it is increasing prices on the most will be grandfathered. A current registrant of a .juegos domain, for example, will continue to pay a price of $9.33 plus their registrar’s markup instead of the new $300 price.
GoDaddy dropped Uniregistry’s domains from its offerings when Uniregistry announced the price hike. I reached out to the company today to see what its reaction is to Uniregistry’s latest actions on prices. Mike McLaughlin, EVP, GM of Domains, responded:
Registries have an enormous responsibility to provide a stable namespace for end users. Individuals and businesses work to build their identity online, most of all around a specific domain name. Large price changes damage end user trust and are not only bad for end users, but also the domain name industry as a whole.
We appreciate Uniregistry grandfathering registered names for the most affected TLDs, though the price hikes for some of the other TLDs are still outside of historical industry norms and are still impactful. Ultimately, Uniregistry’s actions are being absorbed by end users, impacting both their wallet and their trust in the use of domain names on the Internet.
We’re in the process of reviewing the implications of the new pricing scheme to determine how it impacts our customers, both today and in the future.
Registries such as .com, .net and .biz have typically raised prices by no more than 10% per year. Despite Uniregistry’s new legacy pricing, domains such as .help and .pics will still experience 50% wholesale price hikes.
Legacy TLDs such as .com, .net and .biz have prices that are regulated. New top level domain names do not.
Ron says
Wow that is a strong, and concise statement, godaddy was very professional in that.
Reality says
A very professional statement from GoDaddy. Frank could learn a thing or two from that; his crazy “holding-registrants-to-ransom” renewals, then today’s poorly-communicated vacillation, isn’t exactly inspiring anyone with confidence.
Ron says
That is ultimately what led to Uniregistry’s reversal of price hike, godaddy was the first of many unwilling to put their client’s in harms way.
I guess that is what makes them an industry leader, taking the right stand when they need to.
-1 for Uniregistry in squeezing people who supported your extensions.
remit2soumen says
Godaddy was very professional and reliable