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My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

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Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#21

Post by superq »

EasyDNS might be a few cents more (literally) than the alternatives, but they're a smallish company and have never pulled this nonsense. (Also their customer support assist in preventing domain hijacks and recovering, which is pretty important if your domain is valuable.)

Porkbun is pretty good, too, but their margin is smaller and domain protection is less of a thing for them.

Google and Cloudflare are very cheap (because it's hard to make money on a dollar profit margin per year) but they're very big companies, so customer service is not quite the same as at a small company.

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#22

Post by franciscop »

mcnichol wrote: post #17
grujicd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this rent seeking? It seems like a reasonable service for their target audience, an easy way to create online portfolio. Reselling domains to be used with a portfolio is just an additional service which makes perfect sense in this case.

Imagine having 900 houses and renting them out to a community of like minded folks. Whether it is at cost or slightly above, it is "rent seeking" in the sense they own, you borrow. While it isn't rented, they are squatting on it.

Rent seeking is NOT the same as renting, otherwise we would not need a new word for it. Rent seeking is particularly abusing the ownership position or power to obtain rent, not just rent:

> "Rent seeking: the fact or practice of manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits."

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#23

Post by karamanolev »

mcnichol wrote: post #19
nathas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at FolioHD? It's geared towards photographers and artistic types that want a really nice portfolio website. Paying an amount that is just-above-market-rate for a domain and not needing to understand how to configure DNS for someone non-technical seems like an absolutely worth-while reseller case.

If you want to be an artist then control of your intellectual property is probably a topic you care a great deal about. Your domain and how people reach you is probably the first lever. If you are giving that up happily, I assume renting without the option to own or leasing a car is a sensible business model to you and you are just experimenting without any real intention of starting. The effort and time in becoming…

From my *personal* experience, the target audience, to a large degree, doesn't care at all about owning domains, websites or servers. They want something that just works and the less they have to deal with technology, the better. In that sense, a reasonable and ethical service where you own nothing is much better than one that preys on you and you still own nothing.

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#24

Post by mcnichol »

franciscop wrote: post #22
mcnichol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine having 900 houses and renting them out to a community of like minded folks. Whether it is at cost or slightly above, it is "rent seeking" in the sense they own, you borrow. While it isn't rented, they are squatting on it.

Rent seeking is NOT the same as renting, otherwise we would not need a new word for it. Rent seeking is particularly abusing the ownership position or power to obtain rent, not just rent: > "Rent seeking: the fact or practice of manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits."

Owning 900 domains hoping for them to be rented is "rent-seeking"

A simple test:

Would all of FolioHD's domains being rented benefit their business or not?

They are subsidizing the cost of buying those 900 domains into their overall pricing as a line item.

Now the registrar is trying to push out squatters. Sounds like the housing and renting markets. Insert surprise Pikachu face.

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#25

Post by close04 »

mcnichol wrote: post #17
grujicd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this rent seeking? It seems like a reasonable service for their target audience, an easy way to create online portfolio. Reselling domains to be used with a portfolio is just an additional service which makes perfect sense in this case.

Imagine having 900 houses and renting them out to a community of like minded folks. Whether it is at cost or slightly above, it is "rent seeking" in the sense they own, you borrow. While it isn't rented, they are squatting on it.

That's not what "rent seeking" means. Imagine you have a bench on your property and people can just rest there. One day you start charging money for it but without offering anything extra, same old bench. That "squeezing for money with no justification" is "rent seeking".

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#26

Post by mcnichol »

karamanolev wrote: post #23
mcnichol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be an artist then control of your intellectual property is probably a topic you care a great deal about. Your domain and how people reach you is probably the first lever. If you are giving that up happily, I assume renting without the option to own or leasing a car is a sensible business model to you and you are just experimenting without any real intention of starting. The effort and time in becoming…

From my *personal* experience, the target audience, to a large degree, doesn't care at all about owning domains, websites or servers. They want something that just works and the less they have to deal with technology, the better. In that sense, a reasonable and ethical service where you own nothing is much better than one that preys on you and you still own nothing.

Domain registrar's don't prey on you.

You own the domain. You can take it and they can't withhold it.

The registrar is already doing what this site is doing. I don't have a problem with a site making it easy to setup. It's the site holding a thousand website domains.

What you are asking for is different.

If FolioHD said:

Have a domain in mind that you'd like to use? Type it here and we'll do all the work setting that up.

What they are actually doing is:

We've bought these 900~ domains and we are holding them. Pick one you'd like and we'll set it up.

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#28

Post by mcnichol »

close04 wrote: post #25
mcnichol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine having 900 houses and renting them out to a community of like minded folks. Whether it is at cost or slightly above, it is "rent seeking" in the sense they own, you borrow. While it isn't rented, they are squatting on it.

That's not what "rent seeking" means. Imagine you have a bench on your property and people can just rest there. One day you start charging money for it but without offering anything extra, same old bench. That "squeezing for money with no justification" is "rent seeking".

You clearly do not understand.

They buy 900 domains. They hold 900 domains.

Anyone who wants that domain cannot use it but must rent through them (whom they rent through someone else)

This is textbook rent seeking behavior.

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#29

Post by grujicd »

mcnichol wrote: post #17
grujicd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this rent seeking? It seems like a reasonable service for their target audience, an easy way to create online portfolio. Reselling domains to be used with a portfolio is just an additional service which makes perfect sense in this case.

Imagine having 900 houses and renting them out to a community of like minded folks. Whether it is at cost or slightly above, it is "rent seeking" in the sense they own, you borrow. While it isn't rented, they are squatting on it.

I don't think you understand what foliohd does. They're not squatting on hundreds of domains in advance. This is how it works, based on 1 minute glance of their site:

- you create portfolio, but it's by default served as a subdomain

- then you decide that you really want to use "mchichol.com". You register through them instead of buying it yourself.

That's it. It's customer's domain, not theirs. They also specify that domain is yours if you ever want to move your site elsewhere.

Re: My domain registrar (DNSimple) tried to 5x the cost of my reseller plan

#30

Post by LtdJorge »

badlibrarian wrote: post #8
velcrovan wrote: post #6

I've been with DNSimple for years (personal and business accounts) and am watching closely to see whether I need to think about moving off in the next year or so. I've also started to feel like something is off … price hikes with no added benefits have me wondering if it would really be so bad to manage DNS for ≈ 30 domains at Hover or something.

Cloudflare handles domain registration at no price markup, the UX is solid once you figure out the slightly quirky process, and transfers have gone smoothly.

My issue with the Cloudflare registrar is that if you are using Cloudflare for DNS too, you’ve basically given them control over your domain. Yes, they don’t need the DNS part to redirect your domain to a different address, but you’re putting more eggs in the same basket. If you also use their hosting (pages or workers), you’ve given them full control over the entire project. I prefer to use the latter options, without using their registrar, just in case there is a problem or misunderstanding with a site, I still have the authority over DNS in a different provider and can switch quickly.
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