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This is another hit to the Uniregistry New gTLD extensions. Tucows/OpenSRS will stop offering 9 of the Uniregistry extensions on September 8th, 2017 because of price increases.
Registrants will not be able to register or renew these 9 extensions after September 8. But they can renew them now for up to 10 years.
OpenSRS is suggesting to its resellers to proactively encourage their customers to consider alternative TLDs.
OpenSRS is the domain name reseller program of Tucows. I assume that the same changes will apply to Hover that is the retail registrar. And of course this suspension will probably spread to Enom that was recently acquired by Tucows.
This is another huge blow to Uniregistry after the GoDaddy suspended all Uniregistry extensions after the price increases were announced and then reinstated some of the extensions. GoDaddy seems to be supporting all Uniregistry extensions now including .click, .pics, .sexy, .christmas and .tattoo.
All this situation seems a bit strange as non of registrars is talking about .cars, .car and .auto that are also Uniregistry extensions (jointly with the .XYZ registry) that are already selling at about $2,500 per year retail. This price could easily jump to $5,000 or $10,000 per year in the blink of an eye.
So Tucows and OpenSRS will not longer support 9 Uniregistry domain name extensions as of September 8th, 2017:
- .audio
- .juegos
- .diet
- .hiphop
- .flowers
- .guitars
- .hosting
- .property
- .blackfriday
“How will this affect me?
You’ll have to adjust your pricing accordingly for the TLDs we are continuing to offer.
For to-be-discontinued domains, all current registrations will remain active until their expiry date. During this time, you may continue to manage the DNS and contact records for these domains as you would normally. However, you will no longer be able to register/renew these names for your customers, as of September 8th, 2017.”
Tucows will continue to support the following Uniregistry TLDs but with a price increases:
- .click
- .link
- .help
- .pics
- .sexy
- .christmas
- .tattoo
This is how Tucows explained this move:
“Uniregistry has announced a number of TLD price increases, taking effect on September 8th, 2017. This decision has caused concern in the domain community. While the registry no doubt has its reasons, the severity of the increases is unanticipated and has the potential to undermine consumer trust in the new gTLD program.
We weren’t happy to hear the news but knew we had to take immediate action. Our primary concern was to determine how the changes would impact you and your customers, and what adjustments could be made to minimize the effects. ”
“We will no longer support the TLDs that have the potential to be disruptive to your business
What do we mean by “disruptive to your business”? The decision to discontinue support for these select TLDs was made to protect you and your customers from unknowingly overpaying in a price range well beyond $100 per year.”
You can follow how this whole Uniregistry story unfolded in these 4 posts with almost 250 comments:
Frank Schilling just killed the New gTLD domain name program (Warning!)
The real percentages of the upcoming Uniregistry domain extension price increases (5% to 3115%)
The Uniregistry disaster continues: registrar increases domain retail prices by 62% to 75%
Too little, too late: Uniregistry will offer price protection on 9 domain extensions
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Uni should be thanked by some domainers who saved money by not buying the new Gs.
Tucows gets it!…”DISRUPTIVE TO YOUR BUSINESS”…..but, will the registries listen and change course?
Since tucows owns enom, does that count for them also?
The announcement was for opensrs only but I expect the same for Enom.
This move by newgTLD insiders, and registries, is one of my preset indicators of when ICANN cartel is about to move on Round Two (second round) offering thousands of strings, which will immediately reduce the importance of the round one strings by as much as 90%.
Something must be coming. Any announcement, including when it will start, even if it’s 2 years away, will kill the scheme.
I don’t think that would kill it but would do a lot of damage. Given how badly the current crop has done the prospect of further upcoming supply would dampen things even more.
Psssst ,,,,,anyone wanna buy a cheap extension?
A smart move by Tucows.
I’d like to tell the industry to beware! There are plans by some who want to stage unthinkable price hikes, simply as a short term communications and conversion tool to maximize faster profits by stimulating the presale of bulk renewal years. They have charts and internal studies, trying to predict in greed what they can strip away on a percentage basis as a premium against “acceptable losses”. They do not care about their individual registries, future sustainability, or their customers for that matter. They are calculating that some prime news placements will drive immediate net gains – at the acceptable expense of the rest of their customer base. It is why (as one example) they are generously waiting until “September”, while reinforcing and encouraging you can still renew for up to 10 years if you take advantage of it now. This is what we have in our industry. Smiling talking demons at conferences who care so little about the future security of your investments, that they will say anything and risk it all at the drop of a hat simply for some summer padding. Think about it – if you know price hikes are coming that are absurd, you don’t wait months to prevent unsuspecting customers outside of the domaining industry from being impacted by it.
This type of loose behavior should never have happened. I’d have rather seen GoDaddy originally sticking up for locked in rates and some COMMON SENSE form of uniformity, rather than dropping names post fact like sheeply reactors. This isn’t leadership and we deserve better. Nothing more disgusting than watching an ICANN representative stuffing truffles in their face, as they have a bedazzled and confused look of non-understanding when you attempt to discuss what failure will look like with their current pricing plans once new registries feel the strain. They were not capable of even processing this thought line, let alone using it to plan for better sustainability and logical planning. And they are in charge for policy creation?
Almost as bad as GoDaddy not realizing that if you cross sell 500 new extensions against an existing prime pool of premium .com’s, that if you focus on new extensions only you undermine the value statement of the .com’s, and eventually bring down market values for the ENTIRE INDUSTRY. The irony of being excited of listing at GoDaddy, only to watch them integrate so many cross selling techniques against you that half the time their own system collapses in programming weight. If you are a primary .com owner, what will you think in a few years when you discover your favorite registrars actually intentionally helped tank the market to avoid “missing out” on this grand explosion of new Internet opportunities? They have the sense to try and profiteer, but are too dumb to understand the consequences of their own actions.
Link and share! More pro-action by the industry means more accountability for all.
Thank you Frank for your comment.
I agree on almost everything…
Have a blessed Week Sir.
ICANN created a total mafia network of people extracting cash from end-users and some domainers and these are the kind of scenarios we are now dealing with.
ICANN is as stupid and corrupt as the Venezuelan government for initiating this new TLD program. They got so greedy they ruined the namespace for everything except .com and ccTLDs.
Hey ICANN, you guys should give yourselves a raise because $400,000 is not enough. How many people over there are earning over $400,000? 30 + ? $400,000 is what the President of the United States makes. Do you really think you’re that important?
Funny thing is is that most of the people at ICANN don’t even understand domain names or the name space because they are not domain experts, they are bureaucrats, which makes sense if you look at what they just did with new TLDs. It’s the worst thing ever done to the name space.
If you put amateurs in ICANN then you will get amateur results.