OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Colin Campbell, CEO of .Club said on Namepros that “.CLUB has voluntarily signed a price protection clause with the registrars for the first 5 years which limits to inflation or 15%.”.
Uniregistry’s planned price increase put all New gTLD registries in a tough spot yesterday. I wondered how they feel and even asked a few people.
So here is the reply from .Club and Jeff Sass in the midst of this situation:
There’s been a bit of commotion among domain industry insiders this week thanks to news that first appeared on DomainIncite in an article, “Schilling: Big price increases needed to keep new gTLDs alive.” Of course, Frank Schilling can only speak for his strategy with his own domain extensions. As we’ve always believed, and stated before, not all TLDs are created equal.
With a single TLD (.CLUB) that has 900,000 registrations, we have a totally different approach and business model than Uniregistry. According to the DI article Frank Schilling stated, “If you have a space with only 5,000 registrations, you need to have a higher price point to justify its existence, just because running a TLD isn’t free…” And indeed, as Kevin Murphy points out, “the TLDs seeing the biggest price increases are among the ones with the fewest registrations… Most of the 16 TLDs have fewer than 10,000 names in their zones.”
We are focused on and committed to just .CLUB and adhering to the reasonable pricing model we’ve always had.
In a forum on NamePros, Colin Campbell, our CEO, was asked whether we too would be raising prices and this was Colin’s response:
“.CLUB has voluntarily signed a price protection clause with the registrars for the first 5 years which limits to inflation or 15%. We may have been the only one to do it. In addition, we have no intention of raising prices and continue to believe in pricing the names on par or close to .com. We also have a different issue. We have many thousands of businesses but we also have many thousands of blogs and hobby sites. Yes if we raised prices most business would just pay if they have a reasonably successful business, but on the hobby side, we would lose a lot of customers who might switch to a cheaper domain. We remain focused on creating and generating a global brand and have raised enough funds to continue to market aggressively with a multi-million dollar budget. I don’t believe there is another company who invests more in marketing. I hope that addresses your question.”
Kudos to DotCLUB for taking proactive steps to ensuring the interests of their registrants are protected and ensuring the growth of the .CLUB namespace for the next 5 years.
So far, .CLUB in my eyes, is the ONLY registry putting in place measures to add value to the name space. 5 years interest free financing with a great marketplace to boot. 5 years of registration fee price freeze (more or less). And most importantly, strong & effective marketing and end user visibility efforts.
Uniregistry was saying much the same thing though.
Ultimately though these registries will make a business decision, if they eventually need to jack up the price to make money they will. .Com works because the registry is blocked by the US government.
What happens after the 5 year period? What happens when they get bought out? All these extensions are full of uncertainty, .club included.
True story this week… I went to purchase a KeywordClub.com
Went to .club website the domain was $50,000, punched the .com into domaintools, it was set at BIN for $995, checkout with credit card, all done.
Saved myself $49,005, and got the .com
But, .club is a class act, they got to make money, and they have been fair to their customers, I own a few, never had an issue, nice fair renewal, no bs from these guys.
While 5 years of price protection is a great first move, what about after 5 years?…..Imagine building a brand with a New G and after 5 years being subjected to a 3000% increase…It’s a great start, putting in a price protection plan for 5 years, but 5 years goes by too quick. Registrars should require a minimum of 10 years of price protection or not carry the products of the Registries. Even with the protection plan there is going to be hesitation to develop on New G’s for some time…..This issue of 3000% increases is really a deal breaker for all of the New G’s, not just the extensions subjected to the current increases.
3000% is like 3rd world dictators North Korea type stuff, it is some serious communist crap, Schilling, Russian? Been talking to Putin??
lol, it is very capitalist crap, nothing to do with communists and Russians, let alone Putin.
It’s the nuclear bomb of capitalism!!! Oh no!!!!
remember when kim jong il said he it 18 holes in 1 in a row. schilling is worse.
.CLUB is still going to be hurt by this imo. People lump all new gTLDs action together.
schilling will either be a Flip Flopper on a reversal of his prices or a total idiot if he keeps his plan. either way he has NO MORE CREDIBILITY IN DOMAIN NAMES.
If he keeps it long term it is because it makes more money. FS isn’t stupid.
He might make money in these 16 TLDs but be may lose a lot more on his other TLDs, registrar and parking/sales platform.
I don’t think he expected this reaction from people.
Do you think new tld investors are also his bread and butter parking/sales platform customers? I don’t think so.
I know a lot of people that have no New gTLDs at all that are angry about his situation.
This is about the principle of it and trust.
Are they actually doing anything though? Saying they don’t like something and actually shifting are very different things.
You can’t actually expect a shift in 24 hours, can you?
Thinking about moving your domains away from Uni is enough for now. And the people that will not move their names to Uniregistry is more than enough for now.
I wouldn’t expect a shift over any period of time just because of price rises on new tlds, it isn’t exactly a solid reason for people to change.
Yes, he will lose a lot of money as a registrar and sales platform.
I pulled all my domains off the Uniregistry marketplace AND I’ve transferred domains out to NameSilo and Epik.
I transferred away my domains from Uniregistry. I would like to thank uniregistry for showing their intentions and true face now. Had this happened after 5 years or 10 years, the damage to the registrants would have been very high.
@OwlDomains,
Epik will take good care of you and yours. If not, let me know.
We are trying to transistor all the loose domains at other registers, and were shifting to uniregistry. It has more to do with creivioit, and the what if, all those names are going to be going over to Godaddy, and efty.
The names at uniregistry alreddy will most likely be going over to epik.
Frank is toxic brand, and I can’t trust his intentions.
When you look at his sales, he is not hard up for cash, he just wanted more at the expense of others, after saying something else. You have to hold people accountable for their actions.
People tend to think actions involved in business, should not be criticized, well they should be moreso than ever. Wall Street mentality just doesn’t work anymore.
People wake up FRANK has not been doing uou any favors, he is reading your uniregistry DNS profiles he can see what you sold and for what. The traffic off your Domains, his brokers upsell your old leads alternate extensions, or other domains.
You have choices, time to use them, then when it’s all said, and done this data is used to outbid you, and make you pay more at aftermarket auctions.
This person is using profits from you to compete against you, how stupid can you be!