New pricing structure draws ire of some customers.
Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX), owner of the dominant reseller domain name platforms Enom and OpenSRS, is introducing new pricing on both of its platforms. The pricing is not uniform across the brands.
The pricing structure looks somewhat like an airline mileage club, requiring a minimum annual spend and number of new transactions in order to get the best pricing.
For example, the top Platinum Plus plan on Enom requires an annual domain spend of $100,000 and 1,000 new registrations or inbound transfers. That plan offers $9.00 .com domains and $12.00 .biz, .info, .net and .org domains.
The baseline Enom account will now pay $13.50 for .com domain names and $17.00 for .biz, .info, .net and .org.
Pricing for other TLDs at Enom hasn’t been adjusted yet but that will change in the future, the company stated on its site.
Despite being owned by the same company, OpenSRS has named its tiers differently and they come with slightly different prices.
Price changes like this are relatively easy for domain name investors — they can just move to another registrar. Many registrars offer .com domains for less than $9.00 to volume customers. I suspect many domain investors will leave Enom as a result of the price change.
But domain resellers are a bit more sticky. Moving to a new reseller platform is challenging and requires a technical investment. Plus, with both Enom and OpenSRS now owned by the same company, that really just leaves Endurance International Group’s ResellerClub as a big option. (GoDaddy also offers a reseller platform but it historically hasn’t been as flexible.) (See the comments for a list of other reseller registrars.)
ResellerClub has price tiers based solely on how much money is deposited, and it starts out very low. The baseline .com price is $9.99 and .coms are $8.89 with a $3,000 deposit.
I’m sure Tucows has done a careful calculation of how many customers it expects to lose from the price change and the resulting impact on its bottom line.
Here are some reactions on Twitter to the price change:
Bye bye @OpenSRS, @eNom and thus @Tucows . It was fun while it lasted; increasing all my pricing across the board is not something I can do to my customers. The move is going to be a pain, too. 🙁 End of an era. Sniff.
— Frank Michlick (@fmichlick) May 1, 2018
Looks like the airline model of miles flown + annual spend to reach a status tier has moved into the domain industry as new pricing tiers are rolled out.
Is it time to switch registrars?— eckhaus (@eckhaus) May 1, 2018
In response to a request for comment, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss told Domain Name Wire:
There are two important elements. First, the Enom reseller pricing was, in many respects, quite inconsistent when it came to price and volume. It is never easy to get from that to something more consistent, which is important for fairness. It often depended upon who you knew.
Second, over the last few years, and particularly with the GDPR, we are incurring more and more costs. This is especially true in compliance as more and more of the world views domain names and domain registrars as the single neck to choke.
We want more transparency and more predictability and we want to reward the resellers who are most successful.
As for the price difference between Enom and Tucows, Noss said “Each was starting from a different place and we want to be sensitive to what each group of customers would encounter. Over time, and once we have moved to a single platform, you should expect pricing consistency.”
This story has been updated with a statement from Tucows CEO Elliot Noss.
There are a number of other reseller centric solutions out there too, if you’re willing to head outside of North America… I guess technically ResellerClub is also still run outside of North America.
Some examples:
* InternetX
* Hexonet
* RRPProxy
* Partnergate
* openprovider
* Gandi
* OVH
etc.
That’s a very good point. Thanks for sharing the list.
Hexonet is North America based too, they have two offices.
Good bye eNom.
You have lost our business with this stupid pricing !
$13.50 for .com, who is the Genius who came up with this ???
You can get $8.03 .com at Namebright.com with no volume requirements.
We are transferring ALL our domain names out.
That’s (Namebright) where most of our own inventory is already after I moved it out of fabulous.com a long time ago.
I don’t like Namebright hence TurnCommerce they game the auctions at Godaddy, not going to support Taryn at namejet outbidding me, and not going to put money into huge names account either, get smart silly domainers!
I know the people behind Namebright and Turncommerce well, which was one of the reasons to trust them and have my domains there.
Btw regarding “taryn” at Namejet – that username is not owned by someone called Taryn (the former CEO of Rightside etc.) , just check who gets the names at the end. It was an inside joke by a well known domainer, IIRC.
Yes, I know who owns Taryn, it is NameMedia, parent of Uniregistry, domainers are being outbid by services they purchase from these companies, who buys from their compeition, so they can outbid them.
Namebright, DropCatch and Turncommerce? No, thanks, not even under torture …
The owners, the Reberry brothers, are untrustworthy to say the least … DropCatch is a nest of manipulated bidding, and they have too many conflicts of interest.
here here, glad someone finally said it!
Bye Enom.
Bye Bye here also 700 names moving out, it was never fun, constant nightmare support, and attitudes are horrible.
Same thing happend with Moniker, you are irrelevant!
Hexonet is North America based too, they have two offices.
True, forgot about that. There are also other options, the list above was just from the top of my head.
There is no shortage of options, they were just better to close their doors, then put these price hikes out there, thinking auto renew by default was going to win.
I see Andrew now added a quote from Elliot Noss talking about how GDPR causes the price increase. I know this is a complex law, that is especially hard to address properly in a reseller world. Granted, it’s already complicated enough for ICANN, Registrars & Registries 🙂
It reminds me though how the upcoming privacy regulations by ICANN were given as a reason for Tucows to increase their cost for whois privacy. In the meantime the new ICANN regulations are still not worked out…
On an investor conference call Elliot said that he hadn’t pegged a cost to GDPR and instead was using the same resource that would be working on other upgrades. That’s probably fair on the Dev site, but they have no doubt spent a lot of management time and legal dollars on this. I expect companies to push price changes in the name of GDPR and consensus policies…especially if Whois privacy loses some of its value and doesn’t sell as well.
It’s time Many registrars explore a reseller model to expand their reach. There are customized solutions out there you could use and not boxed solutions alone – create a niche model, expand your reach, and create value so pricing shouldn’t be an issue because of the value you offer your resellers.
Get the ntlds registries to Support with MDF funds – they need the help to reach more potential end users for health registrations beyond year 1 registrations and create smarter strategic partnerships beyond those who are priced sensitive ( for good reason if there isn’t value offered with the registration).
Why they did such huge mess.? So many people start moving. Huge Prices.
I currently get my best prices at GoDaddy.com and Epik.com