[HN Gopher] Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase
___________________________________________________________________
Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase
Author : nonoesp
Score : 178 points
Date : 2023-08-21 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.namecheap.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.namecheap.com)
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| the rent economy is the economy of the dead!
| CameronNemo wrote:
| How is this anything but rent seeking on the part of Verisign?
|
| Edit: not surprised how this got regulatory approval...
| https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/09/website-domain-more...
| monetus wrote:
| "I think calling them a monopoly at this point is an unfair
| comparison. Verisign is no more a monopoly than your Ford
| dealer is a monopoly," Redl said. "It's not the original days
| of the internet where that was the only top-level domain."
|
| It is bothers me that the monopoly is excused this way.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| TLDs may sort of be fungible, but not really. No one looks at
| widgets.com and widgets.tube as identical, whereas no one
| really cares about one car versus another beyond feelings of
| personal worth.
| listenallyall wrote:
| I think Hyatt and Hilton have a lot stronger brand names
| than "a friendly lady named Shiela" but Airbnb built an
| empire on the latter.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Comeback when anyone builds an iconic brand around
| .$BRAND_NAME or even .museum
|
| Seriously. It's not an issue of brand recognition. It's
| an issue of decades of basic phishing defense.
| listenallyall wrote:
| bit.ly
| benbristow wrote:
| It is a monopoly. - .com domains have the brand-recognition
| and trust behind them. Other TLDs still feel 'knock-off'
| especially for lesser technically aware people.
|
| Would you trust myshop.com or myshop.xyz more?
| paulddraper wrote:
| Well, I can own a Ford.
| Joeri wrote:
| When I live somewhere and the owner of the water company
| decides they need to increase prices 9% despite having lower
| costs, they are definitely exercising their monopoly, even
| when there are several other utilities coming to my home and
| so many other kinds of beverage I might acquire.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| How do you know they have lower costs? My local water
| municipality recently increased prices citing increased
| pricing across the entire spectrum of equipment, materials,
| chemicals and labor. This in addition to state-mandated
| improvements to waste water management that must be
| completed within a certain timeframe.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| If you're in Britain most likely your water company has
| been saddled with debt [so it could pay more to its
| shareholders] and is in serious economical difficulties.
| thayne wrote:
| If you already have a .com domain that all your customers are
| familiar with, its not like you can just switch to a
| different domain. _Maybe_ I could excuse this if it was only
| for new registrations, but left the price for renewals the
| same, at least for existing domain owners.
| throitallaway wrote:
| If you have customers familiar with your domain, annual
| domain renewal is an extremely negligible cost to your
| business.
| seszett wrote:
| What if you have family or friends "familiar with your
| domain", but no paying customers?
| redog wrote:
| ...charge them for dinner. -verisign
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| Then you send them to the new website. It's about as much
| a bother as changing postal addresses.
| paulmd wrote:
| mmhmm, and what happens to their email at the old
| address?
| Spivak wrote:
| You tell people to use the new email. I don't understand
| this, if you make a thing the root of your identity then
| you have get everyone to migrate when it changes. There
| is no solution to this problem that doesn't involve
| implementing USPS mail forwarding for email.
| macintux wrote:
| There is a solution to the problem: price caps.
| joshmanders wrote:
| I am not exactly happy about the price increase, but if
| the domain is this important, is $15/yr really that bad?
|
| Like I'm flabbergasted at people complaining about the
| burdens of doing something nobody would do, because the
| cost isn't worth the effort.
|
| Now if they raised prices to $100+/yr I could imagine,
| but $15/yr is negligible costs.
| sentientslug wrote:
| The point is that they could raise the prices to $100+/yr
| if they damn well pleased. That's why the outrage, not
| over the 15 dollars
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Unless the price suddenly increases, say, 20000x.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| 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...
| midasuni wrote:
| 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.
| pwpw wrote:
| 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 feels a smidge different.
| jonas21 wrote:
| 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, even for a small restaurant, when the
| lease comes up for renewal.
| easrng wrote:
| Discord moved from discordapp.com to discord.com
| zamadatix wrote:
| There are some differences in the regulation of DNS
| assignments and real estate that makes this comparison
| not as direct as it may have been intended. Namely who
| can own the assets and if they are transferable. In real
| estate both of these lean much more on the open side,
| creating market forces which allows capitalism to work.
| Even if you yourself don't own property in e.g. NYC there
| is more than one investment company looking to buy and
| sell in NYC. In DNS these assignments enforce a system of
| renting and registry lock in. There is little room for
| capitalism to do its thing when avenues for competition
| are removed in this way.
|
| Even seeming outs such as "invest in a gTLD" don't
| provide the opportunity. Aside from being the virtual
| equivalent of "why don't you just go build your hair
| salon 50 miles out of town where nobody owns anything yet
| for 1,000x the cost of a building in town?" gTLDs require
| being a well established organization, among other
| eligibility requirements, which creates a bit of a
| chicken and egg problem.
|
| Both do have a 3rd component of "group good overhead" but
| the IANA fees of ~18 cents don't seem to be the problem
| so there's no sense in comparing/contrasting these
| differences.
| listenallyall wrote:
| If your business is at a desirable address that customers
| are familiar with, and have visited for years... should you
| be entitled to 4 different landlords available to negotiate
| your next lease? Might be a nice thought but it's not a
| reality. You've got one landlord, make peace with that, or
| move.
| davewashere wrote:
| "Companies that don't want to pay Verisign's price hikes can
| choose an address ending in .biz or .info, for example."
|
| A real-life "we have TLDs at home" from someone who has
| probably never seen the related meme.
| eclipticplane wrote:
| When you have a monopoly, you spend all of your time
| explaining why you don't have a monopoly. When you don't have
| a monopoly, you spend all your time building toward a
| monopoly.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Also are Ford dealers not doing very similar anticompetitive
| things? Demanding high markups over msrp for electric
| vehicles, or refusing to offer them altogether, for example.
| hedora wrote:
| Well, if you don't like Verisign's service, you can always
| move one county over, and deal with a different TLD domain
| registrar for .com, just like with your Ford dealer.
|
| (As an aside, I'd pay for a better-curated DNS
| infrastructure. For instance, google's font domains of
| whatever could just resolve to something federated, and that
| has TLS certs that are trusted by the alternative
| infrastructure. Google's chain of trust could be on a
| certificate revocation list.)
| wmf wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is a joke, but it's not correct.
| Verisign handles all .com domains; all the different
| registrars are just frontends to Verisign.
| tg180 wrote:
| I hope that someone sooner or later will be able to propose
| an alternative model to the current DNS infrastructure.
|
| Exceeding the current limits and the abuses that derive
| from it is certainly something extremely difficult to
| achieve, but I think there's a market in trying to fix the
| status quo.
| sva_ wrote:
| That comparison makes no sense.
|
| All TLDs in this case would be equivalent to all car brands.
| (All car brands => Ford) <=> (All TLDs => .com)
| thayne wrote:
| If the other TLDs are actually providing competition, and TLDs
| are fungible, wouldn't that drive the price down, not up?
| scrollaway wrote:
| But TLDs are not fungible. If Apple switched to apple.name or
| apple.hospital because "it's cheaper" you'd raise more
| eyebrows than you have.
| thayne wrote:
| That's part of my point. Since customers can't actually
| replace a ".com" domain with a domain from a "competitor"
| TLD, it isn't actually competition.
|
| If .name was just as good as .com then if verisign
| increased the price, they would lose customers who would
| use .name instead. So the fact that verisign can increase
| the price when .com is _already_ more expensive than other
| TLDs is evidence that they do have a monopoly.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Also rent seeking by namecheap. But agreed. It's parasitic.
| midasuni wrote:
| Can you not simply move your registration to another provider
| (Amazon etc)
| ksec wrote:
| >Also rent seeking by namecheap
|
| What has it got to do with namecheap when they dont own the
| registry of .COM or .XYZ?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I think because the Verisign price increase is only 7%, and
| presumably namecheap has a margin on top of that. So
| increasing the price by 9% and blaming the registry could
| be considered unreasonable.
| skilled wrote:
| But isn't the 7% already agreed upon in the wholesale
| agreement?
|
| https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-
| agreements/com/c...
|
| I was under the impression that the other $6 comes from
| Namecheap, no? Maybe I misunderstood it.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| This comment breaks it down. Namecheap is using the
| opportunity to sneakily increase their markup, which is a
| bit underhanded IMO.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37213773
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| They use the occasion to get more commission, by
| encouraging renewals further in the future to "lock" the
| current price. Presumably they get the full 10 years worth
| of commission today when a .com is renewed for that long.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I'm not saying they are doing anything right or wrong but
| they are probably a profitable company who could have
| theoretically spared to absorb some (or all) of it without
| passing it through to their customers
|
| Instead, they are passing it on 100%.
| Vanclief wrote:
| Why should namecheap subsidize the cost? That makes 0
| sense and I say it as a namecheap customer. I don't see
| how its fair for them to cover the cost and I don't want
| them to do so because I am a happy customer and don't
| want them to go out of business or lower their product
| quality.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Why should namecheap subsidize the cost
|
| Why are they entitled to have their profit margins
| protected no matter what?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage-price_spiral
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
|
| Certain businesses get made obsolete over time. Namecheap
| decided to pass along 100% of the cost, what if their
| competitor passes along 50%?
| tedivm wrote:
| Namecheap is passing along 209% of their cost. They're
| raising prices on their cut more than Verisign is on
| theirs.
| [deleted]
| tedivm wrote:
| Verisign is adding $0.62, while Namecheap is increasing
| their cut by $0.68.
|
| They're passing it through by 209%, not 100%.
| [deleted]
| robomartin wrote:
| > How is this anything but rent seeking on the part of
| Verisign?
|
| While I generally agree with you --this smells like potential
| rent-seeking--, in order to be able to conclusively label it as
| such we have to know about the real cost structure that drives
| a company like Verisign. All of that information is here:
|
| https://investor.verisign.com/financial-information/annual-r...
|
| I wish I had the time to dive into this. I just don't. I
| generally try to avoid making assertions without having done
| some work in support of them. That's why I can't reach this
| conclusion --I can suspect it to be true though.
|
| As a reminder, "rent" in "rent seeking" isn't the colloquial
| "rent", as in what you pay to rent a car or a house. Economic
| rent, as a term of trade, is related to financial gains
| obtained without increases in productivity. As such it has been
| "fuzzified" to make it apply to all kinds of things that have
| nothing whatsoever to do with economic rent-seeking. As an
| example of real rent-seeking, an article in Forbes describes
| how writing an essay in college to obtain a grant (and maybe
| even admission or tuition discounts) is classic rent-seeking.
| Same with a company lobbying government for subsidies --they
| didn't make their process or product better in exchange for the
| financial gain.
|
| In other words, the question here is squarely centered around
| the real cost structure at Verisign. Frankly, I don't know
| everything they do and how much it costs to support the TLD's
| they administer. I still remember when domains were free --as a
| fool, I didn't register a pile of them back then.
|
| It sure feels like rent-seeking. That doesn't mean it is.
| Without the proper analysis of their accounting this
| characterization might not be correct. In other words, it might
| be quite possible that they can fully justify the increase in
| rates due to increases in costs.
|
| Not to go too far, wages have gone up across the board (in
| numerical, not real terms) and inflation has made everything
| more expensive. Power, taxes, food, transportation, labor, etc.
| Every single business has had their cost structure increase, in
| some cases dramatically so. Given this framework, I'd be
| cautious about ascribing nefarious intent to any business
| increasing their pricing.
|
| Put a different way: A rent-seeking claim needs to include a
| "Minimum Viable Financial Analysis" in support of this
| conclusion. Prices going up isn't enough evidence of this at
| all. Not liking price increases is no evidence at all.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I think the onus is on Verisign to justify their price
| increases, not the consumer if the monopoly.
|
| So far I've seen them hand waive about inflation and "demand
| for domains".
|
| As of 2022, their operating margin was about 65%... That
| doesn't indicate a company that needs to increase prices.
| robomartin wrote:
| > hand waive about inflation
|
| There's nothing whatsoever hand-wavy about inflation. It's
| as real as can be, and it affects everyone and everything.
|
| > As of 2022, their operating margin was about 65%... That
| doesn't indicate a company that needs to increase prices.
|
| It indicates nothing. That isn't even close to proper
| analysis of their financials. As is often the case with
| chat room discussions, people just love to grab onto one
| number or one fact and use it to flog everyone to death.
| Well, I have news, reality --as opposed to fantasy-- is a
| complex multivariate problem. A single number is
| meaningless.
|
| Note that I am not at all defending Verisign. I know
| nothing about their operations and don't have the time to
| dive into it. For all I know this actually is 100% rent-
| seeking, in the full economic sense of the term.
|
| I am defending reason and the requirement for solid
| analysis and justification before accusing anyone of
| anything. This, in sharp contrast with the typical lynching
| mob mentality that permeates online conversations.
|
| What I am sick of and will not do, is people just jumping
| at labelling things (people, businesses, etc.) because they
| don't like something rather than through critical thinking,
| demonstrable and reproducible analysis of facts in full
| context. You know, like calling someone "racist" because
| they bought vanilla ice cream (not making light of real
| racism, but one has to admit we have taken that term to
| insane lengths and depths).
|
| Maybe this is rent-seeking. Don't know. What I do know is
| that the claim has been made in this thread and the only
| real support is feelings, not well-presented evidence.
|
| Also, saying someone makes 65% operating margin as a
| measure of evil-ness is ridiculous. Who put anyone in
| charge of deciding how much margin makes someone worthy?
| 5%? 10%? 25%? 0%? What happens to that fake virtuous badge
| when things go wrong (pandemic, economic downturn) and the
| company has to fire half the staff because they were
| labeled evil for making more than 5%? Yeah, the people who
| lost their jobs are going to think very highly of the
| virtue police on that day.
|
| As someone who has founded and operated multiple businesses
| in the last four decades, this kind of thing really drives
| me up a wall. People who have never risked a dime of their
| own trying to make a non-trivial business go actually think
| they understand business. It's both the saddest and the
| funniest thing seen online and, with some frequency, on HN.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| _Maybe this is rent-seeking. Don 't know. What I do know
| is that the claim has been made in this thread and the
| only real support is feelings_
|
| Who made the claim?
|
| _Also, saying someone makes 65% operating margin as a
| measure of evil-ness is ridiculous_
|
| You said evil, not me. Projection?
| willio58 wrote:
| Yep, digital landlord that should be abolished from the system.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| If we're going to fix issues with domains I would like to find
| a way to ban domain parking and "premium" domain prices sold by
| registrars.
|
| I'm fine with an individual holding a handful of unused
| domains, but the legislation should eliminate anyone holding
| domains as their primary source of income.
| tiku wrote:
| Those database records are getting expensive. Guess I got to
| charge my clients more as well.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I have been a bit reluctant to complain too much about prices
| going up recently since in many ways it feels like a hopeless
| battle.
|
| But in this particular case, I don't quite understand why
| Verisign needs to increase the cost of this. I can't imagine the
| infrastructure costs are really that high for this. So I am
| really curious where this extra money is really going?
|
| Sure it's not much, but I would still like a justification as to
| why.
|
| I am also curious that I can't find any information about AWS
| increasing their cost for .com domains. They are still sitting at
| $13 for both .com and .xyz
| sigio wrote:
| They dont _NEED_ to raise their pricing, but the contract they
| have with ICANN states they _MAY_ raise their prices with a
| fixed percentage, which means as much that they WILL raise
| their prices with this percentage every year. It's not like you
| are going to migrate your domains to a different TLD.
| hysan wrote:
| How do other registrars compare with Namecheap? I've been using
| them for a long time and haven't had any problems with their
| services, so I stopped keeping track of how the industry has
| evolved.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| I like/use Dynadot: cheap, free privacy, and they pass on the
| ability to domain taste (get refunds within 72 hours).
| ntac wrote:
| I can't say how they compare, but I've had no complaints with
| Domain Monger in 20+ years.
| stavros wrote:
| I use Cloudflare, they rent their domains at cost, and provide
| privacy by default.
| mplewis wrote:
| Porkbun has provided me better service at an extremely
| competitive price.
| kyrra wrote:
| I just moved all my domains there. Porkbun's UI is fast and
| simple, I love it.
| benguild wrote:
| the .xyz guy be printing money
| DonnyV wrote:
| I think this is because of Google Domains going away. They could
| afford to sell domains pretty cheaply so they were the price
| setter in the industry. Now that they're going away. I bet
| everyone is going to start raising prices.
| donmcronald wrote:
| No. They're contractually allowed to raise prices by 7% for a 4
| year period. 2020 = 7.85 2021 = 7.85
| x 1.07 = 8.39 2022 = 8.39 x 1.07 = 8.97 2023 =
| 8.97 x 1.07 = 9.59 2024 = 9.59 x 1.07 = 10.26
| ted0 wrote:
| Ted from Namecheap here. We have launched a new beta registrar,
| Spaceship.com, which has wholesale pricing on most extensions. A
| reminder that wholesale pricing is set by each TLD's registry,
| not us.
|
| Would love your feedback on this early version of Spaceship.
| geetee wrote:
| If I'm leaving Namecheap, I'm leaving Namecheap.
| ted0 wrote:
| Well fair but I welcome you to at least check it out! It's an
| entirely new codebase and platform.
| hnarn wrote:
| spaceship.com has a "sale" on .com domains, $7.88 now and $8.80
| list price. since both of those are lower than the current fee
| of $9.15, how is anyone expected to trust that the price will
| not increase in the future if you're selling them at a loss?
| ted0 wrote:
| We are committed to having competitive pricing at Spaceship
| for the long term. If you're concerned, you can also lock in
| current pricing with multi-year registration.
|
| Fwiw, you could say the same about anyone else in the market.
| Wholesale pricing is controlled by the registry, retail
| pricing can be updated by the registrar at any time.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| 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 with
| Namecheap.
| ted0 wrote:
| 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.
| dbbk wrote:
| I am very confused by this. What's the purpose? Why not just
| improve Namecheap?
| ted0 wrote:
| It's an entirely new brand and platform that's been in the
| works for a while.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| 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.
| ted0 wrote:
| 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.
| petecooper wrote:
| Porkbun pricing:
|
| .com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com
|
| .xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz
| greenSunglass wrote:
| I use porkbun for 10 domains now for the last 5 years. They are
| great. Highly recommend
| verst wrote:
| For now - but surely they too will increase as part of this.
| What are the rates after the increase which will impact every
| registry?
| BXlnt2EachOther wrote:
| Cloudflare upcoming price changes -- yes, they like other
| registrars will be affected.
|
| The announcement page might be behind a login, couldn't seem
| to link it directly .com $9.15 -> $9.77
| .xyz $9.33 -> $10.18 .org $10.11 (today's
| price... not affected?) .net $10.10 (today's
| price... not affected?)
| judge2020 wrote:
| Every registrar*
|
| Registry is like verisign owning .com
|
| Registrar is all of the people who sell you .com domains, by
| having a contract with the registry.
| verst wrote:
| Funnily I even looked up this distinction before writing
| because I very much know of the difference (see my comment
| history) but wrote exactly the wrong one. Oh well. Yes I
| meant registrar, not the TLD registry.
| lxe wrote:
| Wow. What is porkbun and how is it so much cheaper? Is this
| worth transferring over?
| mikea1 wrote:
| > how is it so much cheaper
|
| Porkbun doesn't make money when you buy a domain name, but
| they may make money when you do not renew it:
|
| > At about 21 days into the Auto-Renew Grace Period, the
| expired domain will be submitted to third-party auction
| services.
|
| https://kb.porkbun.com/article/37-what-happens-after-a-
| domai...
|
| Other registrars, like GoDaddy, do this too.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Domains are a loss leader product for everyone in the
| internet/hosting industry. Porkbun's goal is to get you to
| buy secondary products.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| This is true, but Porkbun couldn't be further from the big
| registrars like GoDaddy in their approach. It is actually
| difficult to buy a domain on GoDaddy for most people
| without getting sucked in to buying extras, whereas Porkbun
| barely even suggests extras at any point since I've been a
| user, and what are extras other places are offered for
| free.
| morkalork wrote:
| Pretty much. Everyone wants to upsell you on their hosting,
| page creation and blogging tools where they have ridiculous
| margins. How much disk space and bandwidth do you think a
| random small business or Jane Rando's recipe blog actually
| use vs. what they're being charged for? Not to mention
| things like "brand protection" where they'll do you a solid
| and buy/squat your domain on the .xxx and .sucks tlds for
| extra $$ each month.
| ineedtosleep wrote:
| FWIW, I like their pricing and overall marketing approach and
| transferred my domains over a few months ago. Great
| experience overall.
| tiltowait wrote:
| I've been slowly migrating all of my domains over and have
| been very happy with them. Lower prices, faster website,
| almost ridiculously clean interface. Even has passkey
| support.
| dewey wrote:
| 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.
| dchest wrote:
| Also increasing due to Verisign:
|
| "We expect our pricing to change from $9.73 to around $10.37 on
| September 1, so don't wait to lock in our low rate today!"
| hobs wrote:
| Just switched to porkburn for a bunch of domains after google
| sold to squarespace, works great.
| bityard wrote:
| Cloudflare pricing:
|
| .com (9.15)
|
| .net (9.95)
|
| .org (10.11)
|
| .xyz (9.33)
| chomp wrote:
| 9% for Namecheap, maybe. Verisign is only allowed to raise prices
| 7% per year at the moment.
| leptons wrote:
| I wish I got a 7% raise per year to afford the increase in
| domain prices.
| iambateman wrote:
| Ironically, rent seeking by the registrars reduces rent seeking
| by speculators, so more domains remain available for the people
| who want to use actually use them.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| The entire internet is built on a capitalist ponzi scheme.
| nnurmanov wrote:
| It is almost impossible to find nice .com domains, most of them
| are either being used or resold. So I don't see any impact.
| criddell wrote:
| And all those ones in use are going to be more expensive to
| renew. That's the impact.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I'm ok if this leads to de-squatting.
|
| I wish there was some kind of bulk price increase.
|
| I know all the issues but if you own 1,000 domains you're just
| sitting on, that 1,001th you're trying to snatch should be more
| expensive
|
| Hoarding domains for ransom shouldn't be a business model
|
| I guess another model is you could regulate the transfer and
| selling of domains to a certain cap. If the most you can legally
| get is say $5000, then people wouldn't collect and squat in such
| giant volumes
| autoexec wrote:
| > I'm ok if this leads to de-squatting.
|
| It wont. If anything it'll just consolidate the squatted
| domains into fewer hands.
|
| Progressively increasing prices for each domain purchased seems
| pretty reasonable, but unless it raises very quickly it'll
| still end up being worth it to a wealthy few. Combining those
| raising prices with capping the resell price of domains seems
| like it would actually work! Someone somewhere might find it
| worth it to buy their 600th domain at a huge price, but if they
| can only sell that domain for a small fraction of what they
| paid for it they'll lose money if they aren't planning to use
| it themselves.
| Spivak wrote:
| > It wont. If anything it'll just consolidate the squatted
| domains into fewer hands.
|
| This is actually great if your end is to get rid of
| squatting, consolidate the market into a number of throats
| that's feasible to choke and then do it via regulation.
| autoexec wrote:
| Seems like it'd be easier to get throat choking regulation
| in place before ownership is consolidated into a small
| number of people with deep pockets, vast resources, and
| disproportionate influence. The nice thing about policy is
| that it can be applied to huge numbers of entities
| instantly. Why risk creating behemoths too big to fight
| before you even start?
| kristopolous wrote:
| There's a balance I'm trying to strike. If you're sitting on
| say, news.com then I get it, that's a good asset to have.
|
| It's those other groups that throw combinatoric dictionaries
| at the registrars that force the latest round of startups to
| have a bunch of letters smashed together for a name, they're
| the problem.
|
| I've got half a mind to just go with katakana for my next
| company, register a domain like tsuitsuta.com and just say
| "well, there's 46 characters. You can memorize it in like 2
| weeks. Not my problem!"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If the most you can legally get is say $5000, then people
| wouldn't collect and squat in such giant volumes
|
| Quite the opposite. They squat on giant volumes so they can
| stick ordinary people for $2500 instead of $10.
|
| They should just prohibit selling domain names. It would solve
| 99% of the problem because then they couldn't use domain
| parking pages or otherwise openly offer them for sale.
|
| Someone would still manage to sell million dollar domains by
| some subterfuge where it's claimed to be part of the sale of a
| company, but that was never the problem and has enough overhead
| to make it uneconomical for the low value domains that cause
| them to register every plausible variant of English text.
| arp242 wrote:
| > They should just prohibit selling domain names.
|
| 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.
|
| Or something like that... I don't really disagree with you as
| such, but where there's a will, there's way, and never
| underestimate the creativity and twattery people will come up
| with to make a buck. Banning this will be hard, and I'm not
| sure it's worth the downsides.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > 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 these companies
| are. You prohibit sales, you go to the website of the
| company trying to sell a million domains and see what scam
| they're running now, and two hours later you prohibit that
| too. Eventually they'll make a mistake and do something
| which is explicitly prohibited and forfeit all of their
| domains.
|
| "We should not attempt to solve this problem because the
| first attempt might be less than 100% effective" is
| pointless defeatism. So what if they come up with a way
| around it? Prohibit whatever they do until they go out of
| business.
| arp242 wrote:
| > 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 a friend to use a
| domain, etc.)
|
| 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.
| kristopolous wrote:
| it's kind of an internet georgism
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem here is that it's really artificial scarcity.
| The true value of the names is negligible because there
| are plenty of good names that aren't actually in use, but
| they are registered.
|
| It's like selling access to sunlight. There is more than
| enough to go around until some jackass puts a massive
| wall in the sky and wants to charge money to remove it.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I appreciate the ideals. I'm entertaining the idea that
| there's a non-asshole way to do domain brokering that's more
| like a store and less like a hostage negotiation. Maybe
| that's not possible.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| What is the point of domain brokering? A company shows up
| to squat on a domain nobody was using and then extort a
| premium when someone comes along who actually wants to use
| it. It's pure useless rent seeking. They add no value to
| anything, they merely tax the public in exchange for
| nothing.
| kristopolous wrote:
| that argument can be given to stock trading, art and
| stamp collecting, and basically any speculative
| investment. Are you suggesting there should be none of
| that?
| [deleted]
| ajonit wrote:
| .com is not going anywhere.
|
| Verisign sits on gold with the most popular TLD on the planet.
| Any registry, if offered a chance, will takeover .com in a
| heartbeat at any price.
|
| Continuous price increase is unwarranted.
| p1mrx wrote:
| It seems you're describing exactly why the price increase is
| warranted.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| No, he is describing a situation where a single company has
| monopolized the stewardship of a common resource, and the
| government has not sought out alternative bids despite that
| being best practice.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I kinda want to switch. Namecheap started playing into politics
| which is a very bad move for an internet infrastructure company.
| ted0 wrote:
| What are you talking about specifically? Namecheap has always
| been vocal and active with advocating for issues like net
| neutrality and SOPA.
| schemescape wrote:
| Is there a TLD that has a reasonable chance to _stay_ low cost?
|
| I just want a domain for hobby projects and I don't really care
| which TLD as long as it's short, but I don't like having to guess
| which TLDs are trying to lure people with low prices, only to
| suddenly raise prices in the future (I've seen this happen a few
| times).
|
| I'd also like to use a TLD that is unlikely to be bought by
| private equity (I vaguely recall this being attempted with a
| popular TLD; edit: it was .org, but the purchase got blocked
| after an outcry).
|
| I just heard that .tk allows free registration, so that seems
| promising, but I doubt it will last since there are real costs
| involved.
|
| For now, I'm sticking with .com because it's the most popular and
| I'm hoping that, as such, price hikes will cause enough outrage
| to be addressed eventually, but I'm hoping there's a better
| option!
| stOneskull wrote:
| > .tk allows free registration, so that seems promising, but I
| doubt it will last
|
| .tk has been free for years and years. i think it's lasted ok.
| it won't be good for search engine results though, and probably
| isn't good to use for email. it's good if you have no money..
| like those free1000.hostingforyou.net hosts. you can put
| together a warez site from the street!
| dbbk wrote:
| Ah that takes me back to being 13.
| schemescape wrote:
| That's a shame that .tk is getting abused, but not
| surprising.
|
| I guess, in addition to maintaining the database, a TLD
| probably needs to prevent abuse to be a good citizen. Add in
| fees and I have no idea what a reasonable price would be.
| Maybe I'll stop complaining...
| donmcronald wrote:
| I would say .com, .net, and .ca if you happen to live in
| Canada.
|
| > I'd also like to use a TLD that is unlikely to be bought by
| private equity (I vaguely recall this being attempted with a
| popular TLD).
|
| That was Ethos Capital and .org IIRC. They've managed to
| acquire two major registry operators [1]. A huge number of the
| new gTLDs are under that umbrella. The new gTLDs are a great
| idea, but (IMO) the poor management and greed that comes along
| with private equity makes them too risky to use.
|
| 1. https://ethoscapital.com/portfolio/
| schemescape wrote:
| Thanks! Why .net? It seems to be owned by Verisign but isn't
| as critical as .com, so probably more likely to be exploited.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I don't know this for sure without looking it up, but I
| include .net because I think .net and .com are both using a
| legacy registry agreement. Everything else uses a new
| agreement that has fewer protections for registrants. For
| example, there are no price caps on the new gTLDs IIRC.
| schemescape wrote:
| Thank you!
| sigio wrote:
| .eu is quite cheap, and will most likely stay this way, same
| for many cc-tld's like .nl and .de
| agwa wrote:
| Namecheap's current .com renewal price of $14.58 is broken down
| as: $0.18 ICANN fee $8.97 Verisign's
| current registry fee $5.43 Namecheap's markup
|
| Namecheap's new .com renewal price of $15.88 will be broken down
| as: $0.18 ICANN fee (no change) $9.59
| Verisign's new registry fee (7% increase) $6.11 Namecheap's
| new markup (13% increase)
|
| So the price increase is not entirely "out of [Namecheap's]
| control". They are also increasing their markup.
|
| Edit: fixed error in Namecheap's markup - thanks everyone for
| pointing that out!
| hnarn wrote:
| Ever since I found out that Cloudflare does not charge any
| markup on the domains you buy from them, I've decided to buy
| all my domains from them. They are very transparent with their
| pricing, and also has a notice about this increase; in their
| case it will go up from $9.15 to $9.77 -- which seems to check
| out with the sum of the registry fee plus the ICANN fee.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Is it _just_ domain registration? Do you _have_ to use
| Cloudflare for DNS if you register a domain with them or can
| you set the DNS somewhere else?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I've heard people suggest you should split registrar and
| dns solution, but I don't really understand why that would
| be best practice.
| agwa wrote:
| Yes, you have to use their DNS, which is tightly integrated
| with their CDN in ways that are fine for some people but
| others may find undesirable (e.g. they automatically obtain
| SSL certificates for your domains).
| CameronNemo wrote:
| You can use their DNS without the CDN.
| hnarn wrote:
| It's possible you have to use their DNS servers (I
| haven't checked) but I know for a fact that the rest is
| not mandatory, because I don't do any of it.
| listenallyall wrote:
| .com is the most desirable TLD by far and also one of the least
| expensive.
|
| .io, .me, .shop, .info, .site are all more, often significantly
| more.
|
| Like everyone else I would love less expensive .com prices but
| honestly Verisign could 10x the cost of .com and only lose a
| mild percentage of registrations.
| megous wrote:
| 10x price increase would mean a lot of broken links and
| significant destruction of value on the web.
| gabereiser wrote:
| It's also the most exhausted. The min char available now is
| in the 7 range. Prefixes and/or suffixes and even hyphens are
| being used to find land. It's brutal.
| Jack000 wrote:
| There are still some good 6 letter names out there, if
| you're willing to use a brandable (made-up) word. Some I
| randomly made just now: pletha.com encryx.com oxiply.com
| verve_rat wrote:
| > oxiply.com
|
| Toilet paper infused with oxycontin?
|
| I like this game.
| 3abiton wrote:
| Reminds me of that south park episode.
| eastbound wrote:
| Hence, a x100 price hike on .com would ensure that low-cost
| domain parking is squeezed out.
|
| It's not linear. A domain at $2000, which costs the
| squatter $14 a year, would certainly go down by 75% if it
| costed the squatter $200 a year. Because the prospect of
| keeping it for 10 years goes from $140 to $2000, so the
| seller would make more benefit selling at $500 today than
| $2500 in 10 years.
|
| A squatter who's squatting 1000 domain would go from $14k a
| year to $1m.
| danjoredd wrote:
| It would also make a lot of legitimate .com owners have
| to give up their domains. IDK that I would be able to pay
| that much for the domain I own for my personal blog
| crazygringo wrote:
| Is that just tracking inflation though? What was the date of
| their last markup increase, and what has inflation been since
| then?
|
| Presumably their employees need to be paid more to keep with
| inflation and all.
| [deleted]
| agwa wrote:
| If their costs have gone up due to inflation they should be
| honest about that. Their blog post implicitly blames Verisign
| for the price increase, which is not the whole truth.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| $9.73 renewals at Porkbun.
|
| https://porkbun.com/tld/com
| fullstackchris wrote:
| 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)
| chuckreynolds wrote:
| eh they too will increase prices over time as namecheap has;
| just a matter of time
| agwa wrote:
| That's presumably going to increase on September 1 or else
| they'll be taking a $0.04 loss every time they sell a .com.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Which they might be willing to do, if the average domain
| generates enough upsell revenue with other services.
| [deleted]
| inspector-g wrote:
| Here to point out (friendly) a typo - their markup is 13%
| higher now
| echelon wrote:
| Namecheap should use some of this new revenue to fix their UI.
|
| Owning more than 10 domains on Namecheap is a burden. Trying to
| manage more than 50 is an outright headache [1]. I'm nearly to
| the point where I'm going to transfer all of my domains just to
| escape the poor management console. I've been giving them this
| same complaint for awhile [2].
|
| I'm no fan of Godaddy [3], but they really did a good job with
| bulk management and organization.
|
| Any recommendations for alternative registrars on the
| dimensions of price, security, TLD support, DNS, and bulk
| operation / organization features?
|
| [1] I'm not a squatter. I own typos and alternative TLDs of my
| primary product domains, and I operate lots of websites for
| various side projects.
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29406698
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470260
| mort96 wrote:
| I literally moved away from Namecheap when they did a UI
| redesign many years ago. Their old control panel was ugly but
| functional. Their new one looked much more "modern", but was
| way less information dense, and they introduced jank and made
| stuff take more clicks and hid stuff behind collapsed-by-
| default menus iirc.
|
| They also made their billing details UI no longer accept the
| letter "o". The billing details UI which made clear the
| importance of making sure the name you enter matches the name
| on the card. And the name on my card happens to contain an
| "o". That doesn't exactly instil confidence.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Interesting, your passport cannot contain an o (in the
| machine readable part). What is the allowed character set
| for names on a credit card?
| PascalW wrote:
| Have you considered managing DNS records with Terraform or
| Pulumi? That way you can easily automate (bulk) changes.
|
| Edit: this is possible with Namecheap as well, see https://re
| gistry.terraform.io/providers/namecheap/namecheap/....
| jrockway wrote:
| "Bring your own UI" is the ideal user experience.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| $5.43 -> $6.11 is 12.5% increase, not 1.13%.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Good thing I paid Google (ugh Squarespace) rent on my domain for
| a few years up front.
| skilled wrote:
| $15.88 per .com is pretty _steep_ , damn. Dynadot shows $10.99
| per renewal.
|
| How legitimate is the Namecheap claim about "its out of our
| control" part? I have a number of domains with Namecheap, enough
| to be an annoyance to transfer them all but that number seems
| excessively high.
| barryrandall wrote:
| The upstream cost increase is 7% (the maximum allowed by
| Verisign's contract). Verisign is allowed to increase .com
| prices by up to 7% next year, and likely will.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's $5 over a year. If that's a meaningful amount of money you
| probably have no business owning domain names.
|
| Namecheap has always been good for me in terms of service and
| reliability. I only own a few domains but if $15/year was
| unaffordable I think I'd just let them expire.
| rewmie wrote:
| > It's $5 over a year. If that's a meaningful amount of money
| you probably have no business owning domain names.
|
| I don't think you have a say on what others do with their
| money, or what could have possibly led you to believe you
| had.
|
| I've bought domains for my employer before. Domain name
| pricing was absolutely a factor in the decision-making
| process. Only a moron pays $20 for something they could pay
| $10 instead.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Everybody here can express an opinion on any topic under
| discussion; it's a public forum.
|
| I might say only a moron spends 10 seconds of his
| employer's time worrying about a $5 difference in an
| expense over the course of a year. At that cost
| differential, many other factors are more important than
| price.
| rewmie wrote:
| > Everybody here can express an opinion on any topic
| under discussion; it's a public forum.
|
| I've expressed mine, and my opinion is that it's stupid
| for anyone to make wild claims on how anyone can or
| cannot base their decision to buy domain names based on
| price, and argue that they should be deprived of their
| right just because they are price-conscious.
|
| Do you disagree?
|
| > I might say only a moron spends 10 seconds (...)
|
| Only a moron buys domain names without assessing their
| availability, and this also covers variants including
| based on TLDs. A company does not simply buy example.com
| while leaving out typosquatter variants like example.org,
| example.xyz, example.io, example.co.uk, etc. If you had
| any experience in the domain, you would know that all it
| takes is a domain squatter to turn your 5$/year domain
| into a >10k expense.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Do you disagree?
|
| Yes. No wild claims were made. Arguing over 5$ a year is
| silly and that's an equally valid opinion.
|
| > argue that they should be deprived of their right
|
| Another of your wholly invented strawmen.
|
| > all it takes is a domain squatter to turn your 5$/year
| domain into a >10k expense
|
| Irrelevant strawman. A squatter can take a single domain
| and say it costs 10k. This has nothing to do with the
| subject.
| politelemon wrote:
| I am not a business, I'm an individual with limited
| funds. The cost factor is pretty important here.
| kroltan wrote:
| What if you are not a business?
| aodin wrote:
| Porkbun has an excellent price comparison page for .com:
| https://porkbun.com/tld/com
|
| They're still at $9.73 for both registration and renewal.
| bjord wrote:
| It's worth going directly to the source of Porkbun's data,
| especially if you're trying to broadly compare domain prices:
| https://tld-list.com
| swozey wrote:
| .xyz was a terrible TLD. I used it a few years ago and giving
| people my email address was so annoying. Even some logins didn't
| accept it. No benefits whatsoever.
|
| "yourname@domainxyz.com??"
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Oh but if you don't like .com name prices you can always buy a
| .biz name! /s
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| I have a .live domain I am afraid to advertise for the same
| reason. But nowadays .xyz has become popular with anyone
| involved with 3D and it was good value. I swapped everything to
| Cloudflare as Registrar following advice on HN and their policy
| not to raise the rates but not much you can do about this kind
| of thing.
| swozey wrote:
| I use .dev now. It's not much better tbh. I usually have to
| spell .dev "like developer," but I think people get it a lot
| more quickly than they did xyz. It's been awhile since I've
| had to say it to anyone though.
| stOneskull wrote:
| be a .guru
| jusoren wrote:
| For years Google Domain allowed buying and renewing all tld they
| supported in Turkey's TRY regardless of registrant nationality
| and card issuance country.
|
| I just checked for .com and its TRY195, around $7.17. For .xyz
| its TRY75, around $2.7.
|
| Too bad they're selling to Squarespace. I just renewed my .dev
| for TRY75 there few days ago. Everywhere else .dev is around $10.
| deltalima25 wrote:
| Porkbun's pricing is incredibly keen (almost at cost) for those
| TLDs. What is their business model?
| brianbreslin wrote:
| A lot of them including porkbun make money on add-ons, like
| $40/year for an email account that likely costs them $3 to
| service.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| couldnt really tell you but i switched from namecheap to
| porkbun and recommend it. better prices, better site (and the
| only non stupid bulk editor ive seen on a frontend), better
| support and supporting a small company
| CharlesW wrote:
| This is a great opportunity to migrate to registrars like
| Cloudflare or Porkbun.
|
| I bought a great domain name from Namecheap, after which they
| voided the purchase and made it a $1,500 premium domain. I
| recommend avoiding them.
| nocoiner wrote:
| I used to hear the best things about namecheap like a decade
| ago, and have been using them since then, but I've heard too
| many horror stories since then. This comment tipped me over the
| edge. Porkbun officially has a new customer now.
| stOneskull wrote:
| porkbun has been a breath of fresh air. i love their copy and
| images. and their specials. i just got a .gay domain for $2.
| it is the first name of a friend of mine. best-value prank
| ever. (nothing homophobic, just a little fun).
| codegeek wrote:
| I don't quite like it but namecheap has one of the best customer
| support and just for that, I don't mind paying the extra. It is
| price of 1 or 2 starbucks coffee anyway.
| tpmx wrote:
| tl;dr: NameCheap is now NameExpensive. I'm a long-time customer
| of theirs and I was surprised at the price differences compared
| to the newer competitors.
| dwighttk wrote:
| "Ahhh! My paycheck isn't keeping up with inflation!"
|
| "How dare they do this!"
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Is this not a sign that letsencrypt has taken away their golden
| goose?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Isn't this a duplicate?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37211462
| dang wrote:
| It is, but since that submission is just an image link, and
| this one has the source it points to, we'll merge the comments
| hither. Thanks!
| water9 wrote:
| How would someone go about registering domains on their own? Why
| do I have to go through like GoDaddy where every year it seems to
| exponentially increase in price? Does anybody have information on
| how to cut out the middleman?
| kube-system wrote:
| The public Domain Name System that we typically think of as
| "the public internet" is a hierarchy which is ultimately
| managed by ICANN. ICANN delegates management of various TLDs to
| various _registries_ , (for example, .com is managed by
| Verisign). In order to register a domain with a registry, you
| must be a _registar_ that is officially accredited by a
| registry. GoDaddy is one of these , but there are many other
| alternatives. Starting your own registrar is not impossible,
| but it is also not a way to save money:
| https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/become-a-re...
|
| If you want to be included in ICANN's global DNS system, you
| really have no choice other than to play by the rules that
| ICANN sets. If you don't want to pay registration fees, but
| you'd like to participate in the internet, your best
| alternative is to ask your users to connect via your IP
| address.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Verisign has a monopoly on .com domains and everyone else is
| effectively a reseller. When they raise the price, so does
| everyone else.
|
| There are other top level domains and some of them are cheaper.
| nikolay wrote:
| VeriSign's monopoly should be ended but won't until big changes
| happen with the ICANN mafia. Cloudflare and Namebright offer at-
| cost pricing. How can they afford it and Namecheap (which should
| rebrand to Namescam) are marking up so much? You always make
| profit from addon services, not from domain registrations.
|
| Be aware of the poor security of Namecheap. 2 years ago I was
| able to persuade their support via chat to remove the 2FA without
| providing any info! I didn't even try that hard!
| andersrs wrote:
| Doubling the price seems reasonable to reduce squatting. $20 or
| $30 would be nothing to anyone starting a project but a much
| higher cost for someone squatting on thousands of domains.
| tomschlick wrote:
| CloudFlare is only increasing from $9.15 to $9.77
| politelemon wrote:
| How are Cloudflare and Porkbun keeping the cost still 'low',
| isn't everyone affected by Verisign's increases?
| patmcc wrote:
| Cloudflare wants you on their platform so they can sell you
| everything else - it's a loss leader. Porkbun I don't know.
|
| Namecheap, I think domains are their primary business - they
| need to make money on them.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Can I say something stupid but maybe true: Do you want to
| be on a domain registrar for whom registration is a loss-
| leader or their core business?
|
| Like, I like cheaper too, but even just in the last few
| years I can think of a few "loss-leader" registrars who
| decided they no longer wanted that division operating at a
| loss and scrapped it. Google Domains being the most popular
| example[0], but Gandi[1] is another where they operated at
| a loss then got acquired with huge price increases.
|
| Disclosure: I'm on NameCheap and AWS's Route53.
|
| I've seen way too many NameCheap alternatives come & go or
| turn "evil." If NameCheap starts being sketchy or
| misleading, I'll move, but that hasn't happened yet. I want
| a rock solid registrar for tens of years, with a business
| strategy that supports that, rather than saving $4/year.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Domains
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandi#History
| Spivak wrote:
| Given you're on Route53 I'm surprised you would even
| bother with anyone else. Route53 is hands down the best
| registrar no questions asked. They have no side hustle to
| auction off domains that fall off renewal and all their
| customers would be _pisssed_ if that ever happened. They
| 're a company where the incentives actually align.
| patmcc wrote:
| Yep, I'm still on NameCheap, for all the same reasons.
| They're not the cheapest any longer, but I've also never
| had an issues with them. And I like knowing that they're
| making a profit on me - keeps them likely to continue
| doing what they're doing.
| stOneskull wrote:
| before i moved to porkbun, i had 12 domains. now i have 23.
| their great domain search, their friendly, funny words
| everywhere, and cute graphics.. it gets people to buy more
| domains than they normally would, and not want to move
| away. that's my guess.
|
| edit: here is their announcement..
|
| august 8 - https://mailchi.mp/porkbun.com/porkbun-
| unwrapped-whats-in-st...
|
| "We expect our pricing to change from $9.73 to around
| $10.37 on September 1"
| hinkley wrote:
| I would think DNS registration is a value-add/loss leader for
| Cloudflare, not something they anticipate large numbers of
| users taking advantage of without signing up for other
| Cloudflare services, no?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I expect Cludfare to operate at a loss. Porkbun is harder to
| explain, maybe they will announce price increases soon.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is what capitalism is: intermediation, rent-seeking and
| creating a monopoly via a regulatory moat.
|
| Some time ago I watched this excellent video on the history of
| Tetris [1]. The only "innovation" of capitalism in this entire
| story are layers of licensing agreements. Again: intermediation,
| rent-seeking and regulatory moats (through intellectual
| property).
|
| A domain is nothing more than a digital record. The cost of
| providing that service is essentially zero. The cost should be
| pretty much zero. You'd have to do something about squatting but,
| hey, that's already an unaddressed problem.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8
| [deleted]
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| The people on here complaining about a $1/year price increase
| while earning $400,000/year as a software engineer never fail to
| make me laugh.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 7-9% increase doesn't really seem the biggest problem with .com
| domains. I think there is lot to fix before that.
|
| And I'm not entirely even sure if it could be run too much
| cheaper. And by whom and what process.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I was thinking basically the same thing.
|
| The cost of a domain for a year is still less than a lunch at
| Five Guys.
|
| Even when I was working at Subway for $10/hr, I wouldn't sweat
| a $1/year raise on my domain price.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| What's the reason for the price increases anyway? New root
| servers?
| toast0 wrote:
| Root server costs should come out of the ICANN fee, which I
| believe is $0.18/domain year for all domains that aren't in a
| ccTLD.
|
| Running the TLD servers for .com is likely more challenging
| than running the root servers; the .com zone is tons bigger,
| changes more often, and is clearly a commercial endeavor as
| opposed to the root servers which is collaborative in scope.
| rabuse wrote:
| They'll just blame COVID, like everyone.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Inflation something something
| garganzol wrote:
| Does anybody still use GoDaddy? (I do for some older domains, but
| I'm thinking to totally migrate to something else)
| cobrabyte wrote:
| Damn, I need to start shopping for a new registrar.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Why? The price increase is not limited to Namecheap, as stated
| in the article:
|
| > All .COM domain renewals will see an approximate 9% increase.
| This price increase will happen across registrars, not just
| Namecheap
|
| You can shop for a new registrar but you'll be paying more for
| .com domains regardless of which one you choose.
| 9g3890fj2 wrote:
| .XYZ domains were already too difficult to use for anything other
| than a regular site since they have such a bad reputation
| (however warranted it may be) as being used for spam. Not sure
| what the point is in paying even more for a TLD that's
| discriminated against by default.
| echelon wrote:
| .xyz is one of the most popular TLDs for crypto and web3, but
| it has a horrible email spam reputation and some gateways
| blacklist the entire TLD. With the exception of a16z, VCs
| aren't funding these businesses much anymore, either.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/28/wtf-is-xyz/
|
| The biggest user might be block.xyz.
|
| .io, .co, and .ai are still the most popular alternative TLDs
| for startups.
| stOneskull wrote:
| > .io, .co, and .ai are still the most popular alternative
| TLDs for startups.
|
| is there a good link for this ranking? i'm curious as to 4th
| place and below too. what position does .app or .tech or
| .cloud come, etc.
| poyu wrote:
| I've been using .xyz as my primary email address. Everything
| from banking to shopping, to governmental stuff. The number of
| sites that gave me problems is probably less than 10 that I can
| remember. I have around 700 accounts in my password manager so
| go figure.
| 9g3890fj2 wrote:
| It's not the receiving that's the problem, but the sending.
| Even with all necessary records in place and using a
| reputable email provider isn't enough in a lot of cases.
| You'll just end up in spam.
| Sytten wrote:
| I just increased mine to the max of 10 years, I guess I should
| have done that anyway just for security. What happens though if
| namecheap goes out of business during that?
| pests wrote:
| Namecheap can hand over their records to another registar
| before they go out of business or ICANN can step in after the
| fact and give their domains to another registar to manage. The
| new registar would likely reach out to introduce themselves.
| dathinab wrote:
| Additionally there is a good chance that a different
| registrar would buy it up to acquire the customers and then
| transfer them to their system, etc.
| fckgw wrote:
| This happened several years ago with a registrar I had at
| my domains at called RegisterFly. Upper management fraud
| and fighting led to the company spiraling, ICANN
| accreditation getting canceled and the site shutting down.
| ICANN transferred all ownership over to GoDaddy at the
| time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RegisterFly
| scblzn wrote:
| "What happens though if namecheap goes out of business during
| that?"
|
| .COM agreement between registrars and ICANN requires registrars
| to regularily store all registrant contact infos in
| IronMountain and set ICANN as escrow, therefore allowing ICANN
| to contact all registrants should a registrar fold and allow
| them to transfer to another registrar. Another reason to keep
| the domain ownership informations up-to-date. [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/rde-
| agreement-09...
| bjord wrote:
| You can transfer it elsewhere at any point and you'll still get
| credit for the years you've paid for (though the receiving
| registrar will likely make you buy at least one additional
| year).
| McDyver wrote:
| EasyDNS pricing - over 11% increase, from $17 to $19.
| scblzn wrote:
| The ICANN wholesale prices to registrars, from 1st of September
| are $9.59 per domain (+ $0.18 ICANN fee per domain) for
| registrations and renewals [1]
|
| [1]: https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-
| agreements/com/c...
| xd1936 wrote:
| And as long as you don't need custom nameservers, Cloudflare's
| Domain Registrar sells domains at that price.
|
| https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/
| hnarn wrote:
| > as long as you don't need custom nameservers
|
| Are you saying that it's not possible to use your own
| nameservers for domains purchased through Cloudflare?
| e12e wrote:
| https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/zone-setups/zone-
| trans...
|
| Kinda, but enterprise only?
|
| There's also vanity DNS for business and enterprise plans -
| but AFAIU that's basically just slapping another name on
| cloudflare DNS - not ability to point ns records to non-cf
| servers?
|
| https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/additional-
| options/cus...
| nektro wrote:
| [flagged]
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Canned TLDs should have been abolished years ago. Domain names
| should be able to end in any string, period (except the ones that
| are actually enforced, like gov and edu).
|
| I'm sure many of us were excited when ICANN announced years ago
| that they were allowing free-form TLDs... but then (per usual
| ICANN) it turned out to be a massive money-making scam for ICANN.
| jl6 wrote:
| Does ICANN have a position on whether domain name prices should
| be high (e.g. to discourage squatting), or low (e.g. to avoid
| being a rent/tax)? Because the price seems entirely driven by
| whatever ICANN wants it to be (by virtue of assigning the
| monopoly to Verisign, with an ICANN-defined cap on price rises),
| rather than any market mechanism.
|
| For example, if a startup approaches ICANN saying they can manage
| the .com registry while charging only $1 per domain per year, is
| that attractive to ICANN?
| mikea1 wrote:
| I think ICANN would not entertain a startup taking over
| registry operations for .com or .net. ICANN recently defended
| their no-bid contract renewal for .net with Verisign:
|
| > If ICANN were to put every TLD out for bid every renewal
| cycle to give it to the lowest bidder there would be no
| incentive for registry operators to invest in long-term
| stability and growth of the TLD(s) they operate.
|
| https://domainnamewire.com/2023/08/16/icann-says-putting-tld...
|
| I find it odd that "growth" is a justification. I was unaware
| that ICANN has a mandate to promote growth of specific TLDs.
|
| These justifications, especially of "stability", make more
| sense to me in the context of the root DNS server that Verisign
| operates. Verisign would not agree to run a critical part of
| DNS infrastructure without a big TLD contract. I'm certain that
| maintaining and running those DNS servers with 100% uptime is
| an engineering accomplishment and its stability requires safe
| hands.
| durpleDrank wrote:
| I wanted to share my experience with Namecheap over the years. I
| made the switch from GoDaddy to Namecheap back in the day when
| they launched a notable campaign against elephant poaching around
| 2009. At that time, Namecheap seemed like a solid choice, even if
| it meant paying around $100 annually. However, times have
| changed, and my opinion has shifted.
|
| Lately, I've noticed that shared hosting with Namecheap has lost
| its edge. The performance has taken a hit, making it hard to
| justify the cost. Notably, the speed has slowed down
| significantly, and there are certain limitations on access that
| were not there before. Unfortunately, the support, which used to
| be a strong point, has also declined.
|
| As a result, I'm currently in the process of migrating most of my
| content away from Namecheap. I'm on the lookout for an
| alternative hosting provider that offers a robust and affordable
| package without compromising on speed. If any of you have
| recommendations for a hosting service that strikes that balance
| between quality and affordability, I'd love to hear about it.
| TimCTRL wrote:
| > If any of you have recommendations for a hosting service that
| strikes that balance between quality and affordability, I'd
| love to hear about it.
|
| CloudFlare
| marvinblum wrote:
| Hetzner
| kwanbix wrote:
| You are mixing domain registration with shared hosting.
|
| Did you ever have a problem with domain registration?
| Ms-J wrote:
| I've had a problem with domain registration when I purchased
| a .com and they asked for all kinds of business licenses and
| asking what the purpose of the domain is. Obviously I was
| shocked as they have no right to ask for the purpose of the
| domain and I explained that this was not for a business but
| for a privately administered website.
|
| My registration was being denied again after back and forth
| with support, without a refund as well. I eventually had it
| escalated to their legal team and they were able to clear the
| issue up and offer me an extension on the registration for
| the hassle.
|
| I'm happy that they corrected their errors and there hasn't
| been issues since, but that type of process was beyond what
| I'm willing to go through as a customer. I then registered a
| very similar domain name using one of the largest providers
| without any incident.
|
| Edit: Does anyone have a recommendation for a registrar that
| just completes the registration and doesn't "flag" domains or
| ask silly questions?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Did you accidentally register as a business instead of an
| individual?
|
| I can't imagine why that happened, but I can say that my
| registrations have never been flagged and have always been
| straightforward.
| Ms-J wrote:
| No, not a business.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| >Did you ever have a problem with domain registration?
|
| Recently, I painstakingly created a five-letter domain name,
| and researched extensively to see if it was already taken [I
| don't use registrar lookup and advise you not to either]. I
| verified that it was totally free and unpublished.
|
| When using the namecheap control panel to register it, I was
| advised that it was a "premium" domain [why thanks!] and
| that, therefore, I would have to pay a corresponding amount.
|
| Summary: My beautiful domain was simply hijacked and if I'm
| ever to register it I will have to participate in an auction.
| I was able to register the corresponding domain without
| problems, on equal terms with all other competitors, through
| Registro.br[0] - although it can't be as cool as a pure .com
| domain.
|
| Would you consider this a problem?
|
| The domain registration industry in the United States is
| completely prostituted and I'm not happy to say it.
|
| [0]https://registro.br
| donmcronald wrote:
| > When using the namecheap control panel to register it, I
| was advised that it was a "premium" domain [why thanks!]
| and that, therefore, I would have to pay a corresponding
| amount.
|
| The registry sets those premium prices, not the registrar
| (aka Namecheap).
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're claiming here.
|
| Namecheap has asserted continuously that they do not front
| run domain registration, and they only charge premium
| prices for domains when the registry demands it.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I have. I bought a great name from them, after which they
| voided the purchase and made it a $1,500 premium domain.
| Obviously, I will never buy domains from Namecheap again.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| That's on the registry, not the registrar. Point your anger
| at whoever owns that TLD.
| CharlesW wrote:
| So does your response mean (1) "take it easy on Namecheap
| because this kind of bait-and-switch is common among
| registrars", or (2) "take it easy on Namecheap because it
| was unintentional incompetence"?
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| I'm saying take it easy on Namecheap because it's out of
| their control, and would have happened regardless of the
| registrar you used for that particular domain. The
| incompetence is on the part of the registry, for not
| having properly identified the given domain as premium
| until post-registration.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I 'm saying take it easy on Namecheap because it's out
| of their control..._
|
| If we assume that Namecheap is incapable of malice, then
| it means Namecheap's systems and/or processes are broken.
| (Registry agreements don't allow registries to
| retroactively reclassify domains as "premium".)
| rewmie wrote:
| > Lately, I've noticed that shared hosting with Namecheap has
| lost its edge.
|
| I'm not aware of anyone paying the likes of namecheap for
| hosting. I don't even understand the thought process involved.
| nonoesp wrote:
| What about CloudFlare's "at-cost pricing for registration and
| renewal," they don't make a profit? [1]
|
| [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/
| garganzol wrote:
| I find things like this to be a shady business practice. Not
| antitrust level shady, but still. For customers it's a win, but
| it kills competition long-term, turning the mid-term wins into
| a long-term loss.
| squokko wrote:
| I wouldn't want my domain to be a marketing expenditure for a
| tech giant. Then you get a Google Domains style shitshow.
| nimish wrote:
| Not off domain registration, clearly. It's a loss-leader and
| gets you in their product. Significantly cheaper than any of
| the "low cost" registrars I've seen for `.net` and I already
| used them for DNS anyway.
| bsimpson wrote:
| how hard is it to transfer?
|
| i was part of the godaddy > namecheap exodus, and it was such a
| pain in the ass that i never wanted to touch it again.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Their prices are going to increase too (by $0.62 if my math is
| right).
| petecooper wrote:
| Porkbun pricing:
|
| .com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com
|
| .xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz
| jiripospisil wrote:
| Cloudflare too (there isn't a public page with the changes):
| https://i.imgur.com/QHUIWSz.jpeg
| dpkirchner wrote:
| That phrasing is hilarious. "If you want to take advantage of our
| higher price..."
| hiatus wrote:
| It appears to read, "If you want to take advantage of the
| current price tag," which seems to suggest locking in the
| current price before the increase. Not sure what you mean.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Right you are. I should not have been posting comments that
| early.
| danjoredd wrote:
| This makes me glad that I paid for the whole 10 years for my
| domain. Yikes. Makes me wonder what prices will be like in 2032
| when I have to pay up again...
| nonoesp wrote:
| How reliable is Porkbun?
| topicseed wrote:
| Very!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-21 23:01 UTC)