Since reading about the reported price increases on some new domain name extensions operated by Uniregistry, I emailed a few people at industry companies to get their take on the news. I have not received many comments yet, but this afternoon, I heard back from Rich Merdinger, VP of Domains at GoDaddy who had this to say about the reported news:
“It’s unfortunate that Uniregistry is going with such a dramatic price increase. Regardless of the economics, it’s an extremely poor customer experience. If our customers plan on staying on these domains, we encourage them to renew for as far out as they can before the prices change. If they want to move to do a different domain name, we’ll do our best to assist them.”
As I wrote earlier this morning, I think that domain registrars like GoDaddy are the companies that will get the most flack for the increasing prices. Although the number of extensions that are facing these large price increases is relatively small compared to the entirety of the new gTLD program, it will likely cause anger and dismay for GoDaddy’s customers who own domain names that are going to be much more expensive to renew.
It makes sense for GoDaddy to encourage its customers to register their names as far out into the future as they are able, but that is sort of kicking the can down the road. Who is to say that the prices don’t increase massively in the future causing more problems down the road? Eventually these domain names will need to be renewed at the increased pricing or potentially even higher pricing.
I wonder if domain registrars like GoDaddy would be able to get registries to contractually lock in pricing parameters in order for the registrar to continue selling their extensions. For instance, it would be helpful to consumers if GoDaddy was able to get registry operators to agree to a certain percentage of price increases over a long period of time. If that were doable, it might give confidence to its customers knowing that the price may go up a bit, but it won’t be above a certain price level.
“…but that is sort of kicking the can down the road.” Very true. Someone is eventually going to have to pay huge renewal prices. And I can’t help but think that is going to make selling these domains even more difficult.
The gTLD-mania bubble is popping before our eyes. Those that pay the up-front 10 year renewal fees, to avoid this pricing chaos, are just enriching the registry.
Eventually most of the new gTLDs are going dark anyway. Save your money and invest in a relevant dot-COM.
dot-COM is king…
You can’t build on unstable foundations. The nTLDs are dead.
Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu shared his comments this evening: https://www.domaininvesting.com/rightside-focused-on-building-relationships/
What if you kick the can down the road a few years by renewing out several years only to find out that the domain extension will be sunsetted?
I think it would be better to try to change domains right now and redirect the current domain to your new domain and brand that new domain over the next couple of years.
Agree, but even if that didn’t happen, once a domain has a high reg fee attached it becomes very difficult to sell.
If a domainer renews for 10 years the next owner still won’t want to hold a domain where high payments will eventually be due. People used to find this with .tv premiums, the domains just became hot potatoes even with years paid up.
It’s a sad state of affairs for the entire world really.
Not having price regulation to begin with is deeply flawed.
Forcing the entire new gTLD system and phenomenon to be a huge money grab for everyone from the start is deeply flawed.
Don’t like the sound of “regulation” or “price caps,” and prefer an unfettered “free market”? Fine, then expect the free market to say “no thanks” to both higher prices now and be hesitant to gamble on 10-year postponments.
It should have been more like it was for .US, .info, .biz, etc.
Perhaps Godaddy and all the other registrars should collectively dump Uniregistry from their platforms – I’m thinking this would send a message.