Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase
namecheap.comNamecheap'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
$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!
$9.73 renewals at Porkbun.
Pricing like that makes me uncomfortable.
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?
Selling headline products at or near break even and then making your margin on add ons is a fairly standard pricing strategy. Doesn't mean they plan to sell any time soon.
I do agree that having something so mission critical be managed by someone making practically nothing off of you is concerning, but I dont think that changes all that much at double their price. Either way the second something goes wrong, you leaving as a customer is much cheaper for them than it is for someone to spend any amount of time fixing your problem.
Unless you're markmonitor big then as far as I can tell the best bet is to just go off of general sentiment about domain providers. Or maybe have it through a cloud company if you're spending enough on other things to warrant proper tech support?
Those are great points. Agree with everything, except does Porkbun actually make a decent margin on any of their offerings? They all seem quite cheap, but it's possible that some of the hosting could be shared out to a ridiculous degree, so it might be a bit difficult to say for sure.
Probably not google. They just sold google domains off
You're making me nostalgic for the first time they retired one of their chat offerings...
Google just sold it’s registrar business to Squarespace, so, maybe not.
One arm of Google has no idea what the other arm of Google is doing. Watch them re-enter domain registration within the next 5 years.
Just try to follow along with their chat developments if you don't believe me.
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.
Which they might be willing to do, if the average domain generates enough upsell revenue with other services.
Yes, it's rising to $10.37.
There is definitely an increase coming for Porkbun but it is still a tiny amount. I just moved four domains from Namecheap to Porkbun.
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)
> their UI is a bit old school
This honestly is a (positive) feature IMO.
> This honestly is a (positive) feature IMO.
Personally, I rather like old school UIs, since the usability is pretty good!
That said, Namecheap's website has always felt a little bit on the slow side: every page navigation for me takes at least 2-3 seconds and that's on a pretty decent connection. Luckily I don't have to use it daily.
Overall, the prices and services that they offer seem decent to me. They are even supported well by local software like ddclient (dynamic DNS, if ever needed): https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx...
Except for their VPS hosting: there are more affordable and nicer options out there like Hetzner (as long as you can get an account) and perhaps Contabo (as long as you don't mind setup fees). Unless you want to have everything on as few platforms as possible, I guess.
Why's that? I've always found Namecheap's UI to be pretty bad - slow, inconsistent on mobile and takes several clicks to find the list of domains I actually own.
What about that is positive?
Sorry I meant that the oldish UI on PorkBun is a positive feature.
I moved ~10 domains from namecheap to porkbun awhile back, since they were already cheaper.
eh they too will increase prices over time as namecheap has; just a matter of time
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.
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?
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).
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.
You can use their DNS without the CDN.
It's true that you have to use their DNS, but that's it. You don't have to use their CDN (it's easy to turn off) and you don't have to use their SSL certs.
I've heard people suggest you should split registrar and dns solution, but I don't really understand why that would be best practice.
> I've heard people suggest you should split registrar and dns solution, but I don't really understand why that would be best practice.
Simplifies migration. If your DNS records are tied to the registrar, and you need to move the record (maybe selling or moving to another registrar), then you can run into a problem where the DNS records are not accessible while the name is being transferred. Not an issue if the nameserver record points somewhere else.
Anecdotally, many registrars I have worked with (including Namecheap/GoDaddy) have terrible DNS management consoles/APIs, and limited options for access control. I have also had issues with certain TLDs not being available to move to better registrars, though I'm not sure if that is still an issue. Either way, moving DNS to a separate, standard provider definitely makes things easier to manage, especially if you are working with a lot of domains across different registrars.
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.
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 "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.
Interesting, your passport cannot contain an ø (in the machine readable part). What is the allowed character set for names on a credit card?
That's interesting. I'd never thought of it before. I just tried to find images, but can't find any example credit cards with non "Roman" lettering, just like passports.
It sucks because the transliterations for some languages are so far off the native pronunciations.
Well, my credit and debit cards have my actual name printed on them, "ø" and everything.
> transliterations for some languages are so far off the native pronunciations
in fact the latin transliteration for English is off from the native pronunciation
You probably already know this but there's no way for them to verify name on card. They can only verify address with AVS.
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://registry.terraform.io/providers/namecheap/namecheap/....
"Bring your own UI" is the ideal user experience.
This must be a Godaddy ad or you’ve completely missed the multitude of posts where Godaddy has royally screwed over their own customer.
Did you read my linked post?
I've had to acquire some domain names via Godaddy recently, and I do like their management console. I really dislike the company, though. They screwed me out of one of my domains when I was just a teenager.
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.
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.
So it went up by less than $2.. per year.. and it's still less than $20.. per year. How are people talking about switching providers over this.
the principle of the matter
It could double and I wouldn't be inconvenienced enough to care, different story if you have many domains though. I'm fine with NameCheap getting a little more profit for the good work they do.
.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.
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.
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.
Yeah, no. That's entirely contrary to the point of the domain name system. It was always designed with a capitalistic, first-come-first-served, mentality. Stake claim to your domain and hold it. The issue is those domains that are parked and never used should be forfeit, recycled back into the pool. DNS should work both ways. You're free to add records, so long as they can verify usage. It's the last part that isn't effective right now. Some way to prove that it's being used other than a parking service. Anything but a parking service.
A few times I've given up squatting on a domain simply because I thought someone else would probably do better with the domain name. I was right a few times. A few made it into the hands of martech unfortunately but some of my gaming domains have now grown into decent sites under the current stewardship. It makes me happy.
I also think there should be a gTLD for people. You're own personal domain, that's yours, and no one else's, for life. You're free to post up whatever within the law of your land. We already have things like social security numbers and the like. Why not have http://john.jingle.heimer.schmitt.id? Apple thought about this a long time ago and registered me.com with the thought that every apple customer would have <customer>@me.com (which they do!). There's no clear way around this mess other than more gTLD's.
"Yeah, no. That's entirely contrary to the point of the real estate system. It was always designed with a capitalistic, first-come-first-served, mentality. Stake claim to your plot of land and hold it. The issue is those plots that are used for parking and never used should be forfeit, recycled back into the pool."
See how it sounds when you just change it from domains to real estate?
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
same. I've had my personal domain name for a long time. I wouldn't keep it if it cost me property tax.
I bought mine for about 100$ for 10 years which is about 10$ a year. If it went 10x times the price, then it would be $1000 that I would owe when it comes time to renew
People, do personal blogs belong on .com? Typically not a commercial endeavour, unless you are consultants, and even then... They much better belong under a country tld, or at worst, .blog, .perso or .me (Montenegro, but it’s about me).
Has anyone REALLY followed the naming convention in the past 30 years? Nobody is going to visit your blog if it ends in .blog. People expect .com or at the most radical, .net. Raising prices x10 ain't the answer. All it does is make it harder for the little guy to get a not-spammy sounding website up and running.
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
1. Get word lists for many languages, as well as vulgar word lists. 2. Generate Markov models for each word list, to generate words and score how much they sound like a regular or vulgar word in each language. 3. Make a list of words that sound like they could be a word in many different languages, but are not words and do not sound like vulgar words. 4. Find which of these words aren't domain names yet.This is a logical approach until you have to explain how you came up with the name “Themicals”. If you’re selling a SaaS product maybe things like “Onychodon” may be a good fit but would kill you in the elevator pitch.
Btw, both of those names were made with Markov as you described.
> oxiply.com
Toilet paper infused with oxycontin?
I like this game.
I thought toilet paper infused with OxiClean, for that freshness
“The burn tells you it’s working!”
oxycotton.com and oxyloo.com are taken unfortunately
washluv.com is still available though
Reminds me of that south park episode.
10x price increase would mean a lot of broken links and significant destruction of value on the web.
Here to point out (friendly) a typo - their markup is 13% higher now
https://www.infomaniak.com is currently selling .com's at 8.88€ (9.7 $). Not much margin
$5.43 -> $6.11 is 12.5% increase, not 1.13%.
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...
“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.
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.
If you have customers familiar with your domain, annual domain renewal is an extremely negligible cost to your business.
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...
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.
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.
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.
The problem here is how justifiable is the change in prices, not the amount. If you raise prices because you really have to and I can't keep up, that's OK, that means that my business is not viable anymore, I need to charge more also or cut on expenses (or go out of business, which is also OK). But if you keep milking me for more money just because you can, as I have no other options, it's not OK at all.
Discord moved from discordapp.com to discord.com
I’m willing to bet discord.com was purchased from another owner/squatter once their business grew large enough to justify the expense.
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.
Well, you usually can simply move just for a few streets/blocks, it's very unlikely you'll have to move out of the town...But let's imagine if many little shops would be forced to move out of the town because of high rents - wouldn't the town come up with some regulations to prevent that?
Capitalism is fine when it benefits the overall economy, but when it starts self-imploding because of interests of a few, then government jumps in usually - that's why we have anti-monopoly laws, because monopoly hurts the progress...
What if you have family or friends "familiar with your domain", but no paying customers?
...charge them for dinner. -verisign
Then you send them to the new website. It's about as much a bother as changing postal addresses.
mmhmm, and what happens to their email at the old address?
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.
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
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.
> You tell people to use the new email.
Easier said than done. For most people that probably means updating literally hundreds of sites (and better hope all of those have a way to change your email). Not to mention telling your contacts to use the new email, and hope they don't forget and send an important email to the wrong domain.
There is a solution to the problem: price caps.
Unless the price suddenly increases, say, 20000x.
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.
Unless you are hosting an email service and now all your users have to bite the bullet and send out emails to all their contacts, right.
Yep, there is no magic bullet to "thing I rent from someone else who has nigh complete discretion on price decides to price me out." You either regulate (which is what happened here that limits the price hikes to 7% yoy) or figure something out. If you can't leave or retaliate then you're basically proving explicitly why they're able to increase prices to the point of ruining you.
At a certain price you just pony up the $200k to ICANN become your own registrar and then actually own your domains.
The ICANN too can play this game, and ask some outrageous fee every year for your TLD
If your business is at a desirable address that customers are familiar with, and have visited for years... should you be entitled to 4 different landlords available to negotiate your next lease? Might be a nice thought but it's not a reality. You've got one landlord, make peace with that, or move.
When I live somewhere and the owner of the water company decides they need to increase prices 9% despite having lower costs, they are definitely exercising their monopoly, even when there are several other utilities coming to my home and so many other kinds of beverage I might acquire.
How do you know they have lower costs? My local water municipality recently increased prices citing increased pricing across the entire spectrum of equipment, materials, chemicals and labor. This in addition to state-mandated improvements to waste water management that must be completed within a certain timeframe.
If you're in Britain most likely your water company has been saddled with debt [so it could pay more to its shareholders] and is in serious economical difficulties.
"Companies that don’t want to pay Verisign’s price hikes can choose an address ending in .biz or .info, for example."
A real-life "we have TLDs at home" from someone who has probably never seen the related meme.
TLDs may sort of be fungible, but not really. No one looks at widgets.com and widgets.tube as identical, whereas no one really cares about one car versus another beyond feelings of personal worth.
I think Hyatt and Hilton have a lot stronger brand names than "a friendly lady named Shiela" but Airbnb built an empire on the latter.
Comeback when anyone builds an iconic brand around .$BRAND_NAME or even .museum
Seriously. It’s not an issue of brand recognition. It’s an issue of decades of basic phishing defense.
bit.ly
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.
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?
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.
Well, I can own a Ford.
That comparison makes no sense.
All TLDs in this case would be equivalent to all car brands.
(All car brands => Ford) <=> (All TLDs => .com)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.)
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.
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.
Also rent seeking by namecheap. But agreed. It’s parasitic.
>Also rent seeking by namecheap
What has it got to do with namecheap when they dont own the registry of .COM or .XYZ?
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.
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.
This comment breaks it down. Namecheap is using the opportunity to sneakily increase their markup, which is a bit underhanded IMO.
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.
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%.
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.
Precisely, Not to defend Namecheap but we are in a different time. I don't know everyone's age on HN. But If they were just 40s, they would have lived in a zero interest era for 15 years and nearly all of their professional lives. We are having inflation, cost of money going up. The margin that used to work for Namecheap may no longer works for them now. And you have plenty of option outside of NameCheap. And again, none of this could be called rent seeking.
Of course there is an argument in US and Tech today ( as shown in many of the comment ) that margin is somehow evil. And should be as low as possible. I guess that is a different argument.
> 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%?
Namecheap is passing along 209% of their cost. They're raising prices on their cut more than Verisign is on theirs.
Verisign is adding $0.62, while Namecheap is increasing their cut by $0.68.
They're passing it through by 209%, not 100%.
Can you not simply move your registration to another provider (Amazon etc)
Yep, digital landlord that should be abolished from the system.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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?
If the other TLDs are actually providing competition, and TLDs are fungible, wouldn't that drive the price down, not up?
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.
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.
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...
And as long as you don't need custom nameservers, Cloudflare's Domain Registrar sells domains at that price.
> 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?
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...
I have had a good experience with Cloudflare's registry service over the last couple of years.
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.
Porkbun pricing:
.com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com
.xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz
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!"
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.
It was more a data point for compare & contrast, to be fair. I'm a Porkbun user but not blinkered to other registrars.
I use porkbun for 10 domains now for the last 5 years. They are great. Highly recommend
Wow. What is porkbun and how is it so much cheaper? Is this worth transferring over?
> 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.
Domains are a loss leader product for everyone in the internet/hosting industry. Porkbun’s goal is to get you to buy secondary products.
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.
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.
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.
FWIW, I like their pricing and overall marketing approach and transferred my domains over a few months ago. Great experience overall.
For now - but surely they too will increase as part of this. What are the rates after the increase which will impact every registry?
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.
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.
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?)
Just switched to porkburn for a bunch of domains after google sold to squarespace, works great.
Cloudflare pricing:
.com (9.15)
.net (9.95)
.org (10.11)
.xyz (9.33)
.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.
.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.
> .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.
you can lookup domain count for TLDs here https://deployment.rdap.org/ (sorting works)
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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 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!"
> 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.
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?
Because big behemoths have legal departments and compliance officers and actually have to follow the law because many eyes are on them constantly. Deep pockets make juicy lawsuit targets. You're right that the law applies to many people at once but you only have to actually follow the law if you're big enough for someone to care about you.
Regulations have never worked when there are few throats to choke. The few either band together and create their own regulatory association or bribe, sorry, lobby their way out of it.
> 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.
> 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.
it's kind of an internet georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> Then do a perpetual lease, or 999 year lease, or pay every year, or [...]
A perpetual or 99 year or 999 year lease is constructively a sale. Anything which is constructively a sale is banned.
Anything which is not constructively a sale will be rejected by the buyer, because they actually want to own the domain and not pay the danegeld to the squatter in perpetuity or be subject to extortionate price increases after they've committed to using the domain by publishing it in their advertising etc.
> How would you enforce a prohibition of leases?
If you offer to provide someone with use of a domain name in exchange for more money than you pay to the registrar to register it, you lose the domain name.
> 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.)
You can use it all you want as long as you never pay them for it.
It doesn't matter if you can get around this with complicated corporate shenanigans because you can't sell that to arbitrary strangers who don't actually want to pay a premium for an unused domain.
If you advertise it in such a way that strangers understand you to be constructively selling the domain then they report you to the registry and you lose the domain, which then becomes unregistered and they can go register it for the ordinary nominal fee. If you don't advertise it in such a way that strangers understand you to be constructively selling the domain then you will have a much harder time finding anyone to pay you for it, as intended.
This isn't like drugs where both the buyer and seller want the transaction to happen. The seller wants the transaction to happen and the buyer wants the seller to go out of business and DIAF so the domain will be unregistered and they don't have to pay a shakedown tax for it. It's optimized for putting the sellers out of business because that's what the buyers want -- because the sellers provide no value to anybody and nobody but themselves wants them to exist.
> 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.
We have a longstanding counterexample: Trademarks. You can't register a trademark without using it and you can't sell it.
And the latter is practically in name only -- you can sell the "goodwill" associated with the trademark and transfer the trademark with it.
Yet with as little as that, we don't have companies squatting on millions of trademarks or shaking down small businesses who just want to use a name nobody is already using.
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.
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.
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?
The value of stock speculation is that it gives the original owner a way to raise capital for a company that could make money later but doesn't yet. It's how founders and growing businesses raise money. And the prospect of speculators being able to sell to future speculators makes the original speculators willing to pay more to the business itself.
A speculator in these markets also has the incentive to preserve the art or stamp and protect it from damage. Which also applies to stocks, because the speculator has the incentive to vote their shares in a way that maximizes the value of the company.
None of that is happening with domain names. The squatter didn't create the name, no one did and no one needs to be compensated for that. If no one "maintains" the name it doesn't degrade in any way, it just goes unregistered until someone wants to actually use it.
Porkbun pricing:
.com (9.73USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/com
.xyz (9.92USD): https://porkbun.com/tld/xyz
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?
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.
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
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.
.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??"
Oh but if you don't like .com name prices you can always buy a .biz name! /s
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.
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.
be a .guru
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.
Yeah, nah.
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.
If I'm leaving Namecheap, I'm leaving Namecheap.
Well fair but I welcome you to at least check it out! It’s an entirely new codebase and platform.
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.
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.
You've been called out right here for pretending that the price increase is out of Namecheap's control, when in fact the vast majority of it is Namecheap's markup.
So that's how I call it ripping us off.
I am very confused by this. What's the purpose? Why not just improve Namecheap?
It’s an entirely new brand and platform that’s been in the works for a while.
Ok. But why?
Long time, big user of Namecheap here.
I'm so confused about Spaceship.
Why would I use Spaceship over Namecheap, and vice-versa?
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?
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.
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.
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.
You're holding out "Spaceship" as an alternative, which absolutely DOES mean shuffling our registrations from Namecheap to Spaceship.
Now you've really insulted us, so I don't give a shit if you offer migration or not. I'm gone.
What about CloudFlare's "at-cost pricing for registration and renewal," they don't make a profit? [1]
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.
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.
I wouldn't want my domain to be a marketing expenditure for a tech giant. Then you get a Google Domains style shitshow.
Is Cloudflare known for constantly starting up and shutting down products left, right, and centre though?
Their prices are going to increase too (by $0.62 if my math is right).
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.
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!
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.
Thanks! Why .net? It seems to be owned by Verisign but isn’t as critical as .com, so probably more likely to be exploited.
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.
Thank you!
I'm not sure why, but the .uk domain was the cheapest option on Cloudflare when I bought a couple domains a few months ago. They were $4.30 per year, so I bought several years of two domains since they were so cheap. I don't live in the UK, but it seems like a no-brainer because it feels like that TLD wouldn't get rejected as a spam domain like the other cheap ones might.
> .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!
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…
Ah that takes me back to being 13.
.eu is quite cheap, and will most likely stay this way, same for many cc-tld's like .nl and .de
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.
Porkbun has provided me better service at an extremely competitive price.
I just moved all my domains there. Porkbun's UI is fast and simple, I love it.
I like/use Dynadot: cheap, free privacy, and they pass on the ability to domain taste (get refunds within 72 hours).
I use Cloudflare, they rent their domains at cost, and provide privacy by default.
I can't say how they compare, but I've had no complaints with Domain Monger in 20+ years.
Those database records are getting expensive. Guess I got to charge my clients more as well.
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.
You are mixing domain registration with shared hosting.
Did you ever have a problem with domain registration?
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.
That's on the registry, not the registrar. Point your anger at whoever owns that TLD.
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"?
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.
> 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".)
> Registry agreements don't allow registries to retroactively reclassify domains as "premium".
On what do you base this? Registration agreements allow quite a lot in favor of registrars and registries.
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?
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.
My guess is his domain name contained a phrase that triggers US sanctions alarms. Things like "NICO" etc (don't put that in the reason for a bank transfer or it will get blocked)
The phrase shouldn't have triggered sanction alarms as the words in the domain are common and no acronyms. Although anything is possible.
No, not a business.
>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.
> 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).
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.
> 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.
> 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
Hetzner
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.
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.
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.
And just to support how much verisign business is racketeering based on their Monopoly, look at their financials: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VRSN/verisign/fina...
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!
CloudFlare is only increasing from $9.15 to $9.77
How are Cloudflare and Porkbun keeping the cost still 'low', isn't everyone affected by Verisign's increases?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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?
I expect Cludfare to operate at a loss. Porkbun is harder to explain, maybe they will announce price increases soon.
At least two other comments on this post says their prices are also going up soon.
.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.
It seems you're describing exactly why the price increase is warranted.
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.
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?
"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...
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
These increases are so frustrating. Verisign is making so much money basically selling you an idea with almost zero cost.
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.
9% for Namecheap, maybe. Verisign is only allowed to raise prices 7% per year at the moment.
I wish I got a 7% raise per year to afford the increase in domain prices.
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?
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.
Great info, much appreciated.
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.
Pff! I remember when .com domains were free! I owned several. Then they upped it from free to $100. And I dropped pretty much all but one as I was a starving student. I owned home.com at one point.
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.
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.
$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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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 $5 difference in an expense over the course of a year. At that cost differential, many other factors are more important than price.
> Everybody here can express an opinion on any topic under discussion; it's a public forum.
I've expressed mine, and my opinion is that it's stupid for anyone to make wild claims on how anyone can or cannot base their decision to buy domain names based on price, and argue that they should be deprived of their right just because they are price-conscious.
Do you disagree?
> I might say only a moron spends 10 seconds (...)
Only a moron buys domain names without assessing their availability, and this also covers variants including based on TLDs. A company does not simply buy example.com while leaving out typosquatter variants like example.org, example.xyz, example.io, example.co.uk, etc. If you had any experience in the domain, you would know that all it takes is a domain squatter to turn your 5$/year domain into a >10k expense.
> 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.
I am not a business, I'm an individual with limited funds. The cost factor is pretty important here.
What if you are not a business?
Steep? .com used to be $100 for two years. That was the registrar price. It's cheap now to me.
Good thing I paid Google (ugh Squarespace) rent on my domain for a few years up front.
the rent economy is the economy of the dead!
Cloudflare too (there isn't a public page with the changes): https://i.imgur.com/QHUIWSz.jpeg
What's the reason for the price increases anyway? New root servers?
They'll just blame COVID, like everyone.
Inflation something something
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.
Isn't this a duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37211462
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!
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.
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...
I kinda want to switch. Namecheap started playing into politics which is a very bad move for an internet infrastructure company.
What are you talking about specifically? Namecheap has always been vocal and active with advocating for issues like net neutrality and SOPA.
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.
And all those ones in use are going to be more expensive to renew. That’s the impact.
But those domains are not impacted by this change, the price is increased for new domains, not for the domains that are being reselled.
Does anybody still use GoDaddy? (I do for some older domains, but I'm thinking to totally migrate to something else)
Porkbun's pricing is incredibly keen (almost at cost) for those TLDs. What is their business model?
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
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.
Computers got slower, more expensive and more power hungry thus Namecheap costs went up.
Is this not a sign that letsencrypt has taken away their golden goose?
How reliable is Porkbun?
Very!
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.
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
EasyDNS pricing - over 11% increase, from $17 to $19.
Damn, I need to start shopping for a new registrar.
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.
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.
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.
“Ahhh! My paycheck isn’t keeping up with inflation!”
“How dare they do this!”
The entire internet is built on a capitalist ponzi scheme.
the .xyz guy be printing money
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.
That phrasing is hilarious. "If you want to take advantage of our higher price..."
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.
Right you are. I should not have been posting comments that early.