Start a purchase order if you want to buy a .Inc domain in April.
Yesterday was day one of early access for .Dev domain names. I watched with amusement as Google’s Ben McIlwain (podcast) responded to complaints on twitter about the $10,000+ price tag. He explained that it was a Dutch auction and they should just wait a few days to buy the domains at lower prices.
If people were startled by .Dev’s early access prices, wait until they hear about .Inc.
Early access for .inc starts on April 30, but you’ll need to raise your credit card limit to participate. Expect to pay about $60,000 (not a typo) to get a .inc domain on day one. That drops a few thousand dollars on the second day. Wait until day 3 to pay about $30,000. The final day is still in the $6,000 neighborhood.
.Inc will always have a premium price tag, even in general availability. Retail prices will be about $2,000 per year.
I assume the value in these domains is for companies with common names that could be registered by someone else. I doubt cybersquatting will be a big problem; I don’t know many cybersquatters who will risk $2,000 on these names.
Jovenet Consulting says
Google does not need such an approach to sell “.dev” domain names. I don’t understand it. They probably are one the only (multiple) registry who does not have to do that to install its domains!
Andrew Allemann says
You can make a good argument that this gets the domains into the hands of end users rather than domainers, which would be one of Google’s goals.
Ken says
Not good for our industry
Bul says
I still don’t see how these domains help anyone or how useful they are. We are still stuck with the ones that came in 3 years ago and more are coming in. If I have an established brand, how does .inc help me? And if no cybersquatter is going to spend 2k on the domain, why would I care to the extent of paying 60K to get a head of them? I don’t get this. Early access was a bang when too many of us thought we where going to get rich on gtlds and now that they are way too many for anyone to care and for domainers to swipe their card, I think the purveyors of the EA need to wake up too.
Johan says
$60k for a .inc when you can get a .com(most popular tld) for $8-9… my two words for this is… fancy b*.
James Kite says
If that is your argument, then why buy a .com for higher than base registration?
Johan says
Point taken. But there’s a huge difference between $7, 8, 9 and say 12. It’s only dollars of difference. Obviously there’s endusers with 100’s of millions, so they can spend money like it’s $8 bucks. But I am generally not a big fan of Gtlds.
Domainer says
I also do not see the need to pay much for an ,inc.
For example, it probably would cost a lot for DNW,inc.
Whereas, DNWInc,com would be cheap.
Moreover, if you told someone that your website is DNW,inc.
They would probably type DNWInc,com instead.
Cute idea but a business could better use the money in promoting their ,com.
DNPric.es says
What about trademark owners for .inc?
Wally says
I saw on both Godaddy and Namecheap that they are running $2,000. This is too rich for my blood. As for me I will just stick to .com domains.
Branko Jovanovic says
Relatively steep price for .INC domains registration will keep away any fraud, scam or impersonation schemes that are relatively common with .COM and other cheap websites.
Besides that it shows your customers and clients that you are incorporated in the U.S. also it communicates that your business is the real deal.