Dotster, MyDomain.com & Domain.com hiking up .com renewal prices to earn $300k more per year

Dotster, MyDomain.com & Domain.com which are basically one company are hiking up .com domain name prices by $0.50 based on the .net, .org, .info and .biz price increases that are coming up in the next months. They are trying to take advantage of the .com non-increase to earn about $300,000 more per year on domain name renewals and registrations.

I got an email the other day from domain.com:

Due to recent registry price increases and in order to continue to provide you the excellent service you expect, we will be raising the renewal price of the following domain extensions by $0.50/year starting July 1, 2013:
• .COM
• .NET
• .ORG
• .BIZ
• .US
• .INFO

The problem is that not all domain extensions are getting a price increase this year and the ones that do get it, are not getting the same price increase and on the same dates. Here are the upcoming price increases:

I ran the latest domain name count that dotster/mydomain.com/domain.com has under management and found out that by increasing all extensions by $0.50 the company will lose a few bucks on .net, org, .info and .biz but will get mega returns on the .com renewals and registrations:

 # of Domains Price increase Real price increase Net profit/domain Profit
.com 598166 0,5 0 0,5 299083
.net 93206 0,5 0,51 -0,01 -932,06
.org 68786 0,5 0,74 -0,24 -16508,64
.info 15963 0,5 0,74 -0,24 -3831,12
.biz 73 0,5 0,78 -0,28 -20,44
.us 0,5 0 0,5
277790,74

I couldn’t find any data on the .us domains registered with Dotster but it seems that the company is looking to make about $300,000 more per year if you also count the new .com registrations, the .us renewals/registrations and by increasing the price of .info and .biz 2 months in advance. And that is just by making this unjustified and arbitrary price increase.

If all domain name registrars did the same that would cost about 50 million USD per year to the consumers:

 # of Domains Price increase Real price increase Net profit/domain Profit
.com 108607629 0,5 0 0,5 54303815
.net 15037725 0,5 0,51 -0,01 -150377,3
.org 10270428 0,5 0,74 -0,24 -2464903
.info 6640417 0,5 0,74 -0,24 -1593700
.biz 2337011 0,5 0,78 -0,28 -654363,1
.us 1744583 0,5 0 0,5 872291,5
50312763

I don’t have any domains at this company (except maybe a couple of domains won at auctions) and I don’t expect to have any more in the years to come. Have a nice day.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

10 comments

  1. Great data crunching. It’s disgusting, to say the least. They won’t be getting any business from me, any time soon.

  2. They should use the extra 300k to hire more people to handle their support tickets! Mydomain.com takes a minimum of 4 days to address any support ticket which is unacceptable. They should also hire more people to answer the phones for support. The should use the cash to fix all the bugs in their “new” vdeck system! All domains awarded to them via snapnames are “unmanageable” without a support ticket. Yes, any domain that is caught from Snapnames and managed by Mydomain.com is unable to be managed without contacting support. In addition their system creates a new account for each new domain. As a result I have about 100 accounts with them!!

  3. They are pigs, and anytime I get a domain there, i get it out asap! stay away

  4. @ Konstantinos, It would have been nice if you list the actual price you are currently paying for dot com at Dotster. Nowhere in the article, do I see an actual price!

  5. What did you pay initially, and what is the renewal fee?

    Thanx!
    Louise 🙂

    • I don’t have any domains there except for those won in auctions.
      And for that I don’t pay renewals, I transfer out all domains before the expiration date.
      I don’t know what their current renewal fee is. I don’t need to know.
      Thanks

  6. Maybe their technical system doesn’t allow them to differentiate pricing for those TLDs, who knows…

  7. MyDomain has the worst support of any domain company I have ever dealt with.

    It takes 3-4 days to get some canned response, and another 15-20 to actually resolve an issue.

    They are a major reason I have been using SnapNames way less recently. They are just not worth having to deal with.

    Brad

  8. @Brad: Usually Snapnames itself can also help if you have issues transferring that were bought via them.

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