You have until 8 pm EDT to save money on .cloud domains.
The registry for .cloud domains is making a big change to its pricing.
Effective 00:00 UTC on June 5 (that’s 8 pm EDT today), the registry is changing its pricing for premium domains from a high-low model to a high-high model.
Until now, .cloud has charged a first-year premium for its best domains, but those domains have renewed at the regular wholesale price. Going forward, registrants will also pay the premium price at renewal time.
Customers with existing premium domains will be grandfathered in the high-low model and will continue to pay regular prices when they renew their domains.
The company will have nine premium tiers ranging from $100 per year to $50,000 per year. These are the wholesale prices; registrars add a markup.
Speaking of wholesale prices, the registry is also increasing its wholesale price by 33% from $15 to $20.
(In fairness to .cloud, it hasn’t changed wholesale prices since 2021, when they doubled from $7.50 to $15. In general, I think occasional but higher increases are preferable to annual increases.)
Registries are required to notify registrars six months in advance of price increases like this. In theory, that gives registrars enough time to notify their own customers of these price increases. In practice, that rarely happens. As a registrant of a handful of .cloud domains at GoDaddy, I never received a notice of a price increase.
This brings up another issue. Most registrars indicate the price a domain will renew at, but these rarely take into consideration known price increases. If I try to register a .cloud domain today at GoDaddy, it says it will renew at $18.99 with my Domain Discount Club membership. That price will surely be higher given the wholesale price change.
If you have any .cloud domains, you can renew them before the deadline today to save money.
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