OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
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:
- .com no increase
- .net $0.51 increase July 1, 2013
- .org $0.74 increase July 1, 2013
- .info $0.74 increase September 1, 2013
- .biz $0.78 increase September 1, 2013
- .us no increase
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.
Great data crunching. It’s disgusting, to say the least. They won’t be getting any business from me, any time soon.
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!!
They are pigs, and anytime I get a domain there, i get it out asap! stay away
@ 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!
I don’t pay, nor will I ever pay renewals at Dotster.
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
Maybe their technical system doesn’t allow them to differentiate pricing for those TLDs, who knows…
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
@Brad: Usually Snapnames itself can also help if you have issues transferring that were bought via them.