$0.18 ICANN fee
$8.97 Verisign's current registry fee
$5.43 Namecheap's markup
$0.18 ICANN fee (no change)
$9.59 Verisign's new registry fee (7% increase)
$6.11 Namecheap's new markup (13% increase)
Edit: fixed error in Namecheap's markup - thanks everyone for pointing that out!
Even if they have a tiny margin on the domain costs, that means that they are probably a loss-making business. So they plan to just sell to Google, Amazon or Microsoft in the future, and we don't yet know which one of those it's going to be?
Even if they had a small margin, does that mean that there's poor quality support, despite domains being mission-critical to businesses?
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)
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.
They also made their billing details UI no longer accept the letter "ø". 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 "ø". That doesn't exactly instil confidence.
Edit: this is possible with Namecheap as well, see https://registry.terraform.io/providers/namecheap/namecheap/....
Presumably their employees need to be paid more to keep with inflation and all.
.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.
Edit: not surprised how this got regulatory approval... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/09/website-domain-more...
It is bothers me that the monopoly is excused this way.
A real-life "we have TLDs at home" from someone who has probably never seen the related meme.
Would you trust myshop.com or myshop.xyz more?
All TLDs in this case would be equivalent to all car brands.
(All car brands => Ford) <=> (All TLDs => .com)(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.)
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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-agreements/com/c...
Are you saying that it's not possible to use your own nameservers for domains purchased through Cloudflare?
I have taken to gradually pushing my registrations out as far as they can go. I just occasionally add years onto domains I buy, so as to lock in the $9 price for that term. Seems like an excellent way to avoid inflationary price increases, or general pricing creep.
.com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com
.xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz
"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!"
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.
Registry is like verisign owning .com
Registrar is all of the people who sell you .com domains, by having a contract with the registry.
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?).com (9.15)
.net (9.95)
.org (10.11)
.xyz (9.33)
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.
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.
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
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.
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 ツイッター.com and just say "well, there's 46 characters. You can memorize it in like 2 weeks. Not my problem!"
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.
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.
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.
.com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com
.xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz
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?
> 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.
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
"yourname@domainxyz.com??"
Would love your feedback on this early version of Spaceship.
What's the point of this? If you think this pricing model is sustainable, why won't you just lower the Namecheap prices?
It feels like a bait. What service are you gonna launch after you jack up the prices to the moon on Spaceship? How about Submarine?
Also I already noticed deceptive pricing, ICANN fees are added in the checkout instead of being in the listed price the domain.
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.
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.
I'm so confused about Spaceship.
Why would I use Spaceship over Namecheap, and vice-versa?
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
.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!
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…
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.
Did you ever have a problem with domain registration?
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?
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.
I'm not aware of anyone paying the likes of namecheap for hosting. I don't even understand the thought process involved.
CloudFlare
And I'm not entirely even sure if it could be run too much cheaper. And by whom and what process.
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.
They have stable negligible costs. R&d is just symbolic. Their biggest costs are administration fees that we can probably explain by their executives paying themselves q lot more than what their deserve.
The biggest part is just pure revenue. And they try to increase that consistently without valid reason.
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.
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!
Namecheap, I think domains are their primary business - they need to make money on them.
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.
.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...
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.
I'm surprised that there wasn't an internet revolution about that. But probably the bad apple/corrupted part here is the ICANN that let it go. We got some proof of that with the .org case.
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.
There are other top level domains and some of them are cheaper.
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.
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.
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.
They're still at $9.73 for both registration and renewal.
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.
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.
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.
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> 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.
“How dare they do this!”