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Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

namecheap.com

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Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#311

Post by AnthonyMouse »

arp242 wrote: post #228
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So Joe Squatter will retain ownership, but permits company.com to use it for 99 years for the same price as he would have sold it for. Then company.com is going to object that they would lose the domain they've had for 99 years or be subject to an extortionate price increase, because they really actually do want to own it. And you can prohibit leasing domain names too. I mean this isn't that hard. You know who thes…

> company.com is going to object that they would lose the domain they've had for 99 years or be subject to an extortionate price increase Then do a perpetual lease, or 999 year lease, or pay every year, or [...] How would you enforce a prohibition of leases? Plus, the tricky bit here is there are lots of reasons for a domain owned by entity A to be used by entity B (companies might be related, might just be allowing…

> I don't think it's defeatism at all, by my estimation it will do very little or nothing at all, while creating a hassle for everyone. I guess I could be wrong about that, but that's what I'd expect.

We have a longstanding counterexample: Trademarks. You can't register a trademark without using it and you can't sell it.

And the latter is practically in name only -- you can sell the "goodwill" associated with the trademark and transfer the trademark with it.

Yet with as little as that, we don't have companies squatting on millions of trademarks or shaking down small businesses who just want to use a name nobody is already using.

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#312

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

Spivak wrote: post #190
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the price suddenly increases, say, 20000x.

Then you bite the bullet send out an email to your customers that you're moving domains and why, rip the band-aid off and move on with your life.

Unless you are hosting an email service and now all your users have to bite the bullet and send out emails to all their contacts, right.

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#313

Post by jbc1 »

jfoster wrote: post #291
tiffanyh wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$9.73 renewals at Porkbun. https://porkbun.com/tld/com

Pricing like that makes me uncomfortable. Even if they have a tiny margin on the domain costs, that means that they are probably a loss-making business. So they plan to just sell to Google, Amazon or Microsoft in the future, and we don't yet know which one of those it's going to be? Even if they had a small margin, does that mean that there's poor quality support, despite domains being mission-critical to businesses?

Selling headline products at or near break even and then making your margin on add ons is a fairly standard pricing strategy. Doesn't mean they plan to sell any time soon.

I do agree that having something so mission critical be managed by someone making practically nothing off of you is concerning, but I dont think that changes all that much at double their price. Either way the second something goes wrong, you leaving as a customer is much cheaper for them than it is for someone to spend any amount of time fixing your problem.

Unless you're markmonitor big then as far as I can tell the best bet is to just go off of general sentiment about domain providers. Or maybe have it through a cloud company if you're spending enough on other things to warrant proper tech support?

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#314

Post by KronisLV »

Ayesh wrote: post #306
fullstackchris wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Porkbun! I nearly forgot about that place! Shamelessly been using Namecheap for a while now... their UI is a bit old school but they have some of the best prices around (at least did)

> their UI is a bit old school This honestly is a (positive) feature IMO.

> This honestly is a (positive) feature IMO.

Personally, I rather like old school UIs, since the usability is pretty good!

That said, Namecheap's website has always felt a little bit on the slow side: every page navigation for me takes at least 2-3 seconds and that's on a pretty decent connection. Luckily I don't have to use it daily.

Overall, the prices and services that they offer seem decent to me. They are even supported well by local software like ddclient (dynamic DNS, if ever needed): https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...

Except for their VPS hosting: there are more affordable and nicer options out there like Hetzner (as long as you can get an account) and perhaps Contabo (as long as you don't mind setup fees). Unless you want to have everything on as few platforms as possible, I guess.

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#315

Post by ivanhoe »

midasuni wrote: post #176
ivanhoe wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run a successful restaurant paying for "protection" to mobsters is a negligible cost to keep your business running (and your kneecaps not broken), but that doesn't make the racketeering acceptable...

If you run a successful restaurant and the landlord hikes your rent you can hardly move town. Yes it’s rent seeking. It’s also the way capitalism works.

Well, you usually can simply move just for a few streets/blocks, it's very unlikely you'll have to move out of the town...But let's imagine if many little shops would be forced to move out of the town because of high rents - wouldn't the town come up with some regulations to prevent that?

Capitalism is fine when it benefits the overall economy, but when it starts self-imploding because of interests of a few, then government jumps in usually - that's why we have anti-monopoly laws, because monopoly hurts the progress...

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#316

Post by ivanhoe »

jonas21 wrote: post #208
pwpw wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t imagine a world where Google would move their primary domain from .com to .io. Over the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed numerous successful restaurants move locations due to rent hikes that are still in business in their new locations indicating continued success. I’m having trouble thinking of any major companies that have changed their domains after already being established and successful. Migrating domains…

The reason it's different is that domains are so cheap and the price increases are so small. Why would a major company (or even a tiny company) change their domain over an increase of a dollar or two per year? It doesn't make sense. If those restaurants' landlords had hiked their rent by a few dollars per year, they wouldn't have moved either. But it's not uncommon to see increases of thousands of dollars per month,…

The problem here is how justifiable is the change in prices, not the amount. If you raise prices because you really have to and I can't keep up, that's OK, that means that my business is not viable anymore, I need to charge more also or cut on expenses (or go out of business, which is also OK). But if you keep milking me for more money just because you can, as I have no other options, it's not OK at all.

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#318

Post by petecooper »

dewey wrote: post #117
petecooper wrote: post #22

Porkbun pricing: .com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com .xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz

Did they react to the announcement yet and said it'll stay that way? Otherwise that's not very useful so soon after the announcement.

It was more a data point for compare & contrast, to be fair. I'm a Porkbun user but not blinkered to other registrars.

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#319

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

ted0 wrote: post #267
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You're creating a pain in the ass for Namecheap customers. Your only chance of keeping my business (and probably that of other pissed-off customers) is to give us a one-click way to migrate all of our domains to your new "less of a rip-off" brand. I'm not about to reward a company that WASTES MY TIME by shuffling my business between THEIR brands. I will make damned sure that my next registrar has nothing to do wi…

One click migration is not out of the question. Super early days for Spaceship. There’s no shuffling happening here, I’m simply letting you know about a new platform we’re excited about.

You're holding out "Spaceship" as an alternative, which absolutely DOES mean shuffling our registrations from Namecheap to Spaceship.

Now you've really insulted us, so I don't give a shit if you offer migration or not. I'm gone.

Re: Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

#320

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

ted0 wrote: post #264
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consolidated my domains on Namecheap, but this behavior pisses me off enough to move ALL of them. And I have dozens. Right after I post this screed I'm going to deactivate auto-renewal on every goddamned one. Don't rip us off and then launch a new service and point to it saying, "Hey look, since you caught us ripping you off, try this one!" Unbelievable.

How would you call this ripping you off? Seems like quite the stretch here. Namecheap is a business — we can choose to take a markup on registrations, which by nature is transparent given that wholesale prices are public. Spaceship has been in the works for years and it’s something we’re excited about, hence why I’m letting you know about it.

You've been called out right here for pretending that the price increase is out of Namecheap's control, when in fact the vast majority of it is Namecheap's markup.

So that's how I call it ripping us off.

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