Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

watilo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 59 posts

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

#31

Post by hiatus »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #7
jabiko wrote: post #4

I'm wondering what prevented the author from having the sales call and seeing what rates they are willing to offer. Best case they might even be better than the current rates.

Why did the change need to happen if this is a plausible outcome? Why add the risk to an existing customer that by all metrics is already loyal? Wouldn't an email with a % price increase and explanation been more acceptable? Why the drastic change in price? It's someone trying to squeeze more revenues quickly and by doing so, damaging their brand / reputation.

It seems like more work to write a rant and post it to hackernews than to just take a quick phone call.

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

#32

Post by sgammon »

nathas wrote: post #13
mcnichol wrote: post #5

[flagged]

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.

Have you looked at Photobucket? Flickr? Facebook? Apple? Google/Android? S3? Dropbox?

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

#34

Post by hipadev23 »

mcnichol wrote: post #5

[flagged]

The business in question isn’t hoarding domains. Customers explicitly request their domain and they register it for them. That’s it. The customers can also transfer their domains out and set DNS entries like they would with any webhost.

They’re not reselling or licensing out domains.

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

#35

Post by grujicd »

mcnichol wrote: post #28
close04 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not like that. They buy mcnichol.com on your behalf, when you request it. They're not registering it in advance and then blackmailing you to rent it through them. Domain is yours, you can move it elsewhere (they explicitly mention that).

It's same as any other domain registrar, except that have small markup (couple of dolars per year) but they provide additional service, i.e. customer doesn't have to deal with DNS.

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

#36

Post by Operyl »

mcnichol wrote: post #28
close04 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They buy the domain their customer _wants_ them to buy. That customer is free to transfer it out if they want to. What are you going on about?

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

#37

Post by barryrandall »

grujicd wrote: post #29
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.

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 tha…

I suspect they're confusing domain speculators with domain registration resellers.

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

#38

Post by rendaw »

superq wrote: post #21

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 (b…

I tried Porkbun after suggestions here. The symbols in my password caused a 403 error. Porkbun is terrible (although I'm not sure if there's a better other option).

Cloudflare also isn't a general purpose registrar - they won't let you point to external nameservers which makes migration bad.

EasyDNS doesn't support U2F.

Google... the usual risk of getting banned for some youtube upload and losing all your domains.

I switched to DNSimple after several Gandi fiascos. I'm not a reseller, and the fast that they charge a fee made me hope they wouldn't try to skim in other places, but I'd be happy to know of a registrar that checks all the boxes (box 1: u2f, box 2: no glaring technical issues).

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

#39

Post by [deleted] »

mcnichol wrote: post #26
karamanolev wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#40

Post by mcnichol »

hipadev23 wrote: post #34
mcnichol wrote: post #5

[flagged]

The business in question isn’t hoarding domains. Customers explicitly request their domain and they register it for them. That’s it. The customers can also transfer their domains out and set DNS entries like they would with any webhost. They’re not reselling or licensing out domains.

The way the article read it seemed as they though they had many domains and customers could bring theirs into that ecosystem.

If the customer left it behind they could send it to the wayside.

If they are merely a broker then I agree, I don't see them as rent-seeking. The article left me with the impression that they had a large number of domains they rent out to customers.

Post reply on HN