OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
On April 1, 2019 Donuts announced that it will be changing standard prices for the majority of its TLDs. The changes will go into effect October 1, 2019. Until that time all registered domains may be renewed for up to 10 years at their current renewal price.
Of the 241 Donuts TLDs, 16 will remain unchanged while 220 will increase in price between 6% and 9%. The remaining 5 have been changed to align with other competing TLDs in the market, including a 35% price reduction to .GROUP. It is not clear what happens to the other 4 extensions and what these extensions are.
In total, the average increase is just under 7% and will only affect standard price domains, not premiums.
Andee Hill, that has now left Donuts, said in 2017 (after Uniregistry had increased prices for up to 3,000%) “we have no plans to increase prices for existing registrants — this is not part of our business plan”.
So Donuts lied in 2017 and is now increasing renewals to 220 domain extensions.
Andee also said that “We voluntarily entered into agreements with our registrars that dramatically limits our ability to increase prices for existing registrants.”
Is the Donuts their business plan changing every year? What happened to the registrar agreements? Did they really exist?
Maybe Donuts would like to share with us registrants when and how their business plan changed and what happened to that agreements?
It doesn’t really come as a surprise that a registry that is allowed by ICANN to increase prices without any control lied to its customers but I would still like to hear a comment from them.
(Andee Hill is now registrars services and engagement programs director at ICANN.)
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I haven’t seen the actual press release by Donuts, or the upcoming changes to the price list per gTLD. Who shared this information?
It is on donuts.news.
I don’t have many new g’s left, but most of them are with Donuts and I’m looking forward to finally dropping a bunch.
But what will we do when ICANN first allows this nonsense for .org and .info and then .com?
I’m also not happy to see this. But a price increase <10% cannot really be compared with the up to 3,000% increases we've seen from uniregistry. Also, if the percentages from the blog post are correct then it's lower than what we see for .NET year after year.
An increase of 7% is not a “no increase”.
Wonder if they are making money at all?
Valid questions. Lot of hype with the failed “not com” revolution, and apparently false narratives as well.
wow. I can specifically recall hearing the guy say on the webinar that they would not do this, as he said, they had it written in to service level agreements with registrars. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
What guy?
“dramatically limits prices increase” means they do have terms with registrars to increase prices, it is just restricted unlikely Uniregistry’s was.
I think registrars mostly care about the atomic bomb level price increases that Uniregistry wanted to do.
Donuts was sold last year to new owners, so probably qualifies as a reason for a new business plan . I do not think there is an expectation when new ownership comes in and a new CEO they should be have to honor statements a previous employee made .
Unless you have a legal agreement in place , you are SOL
You hit it right on, if I could like your reply I definitely would.
I love that song, “Time To Say Goodbye”…
This was in the cards with the management change at Donuts, everyone saw it coming. ICANN muffin baskets are very grand, and now with new icann blood running Donuts, they got to step those cheese platters, and expensive “work” trips, guess whose going to pay for it.
Where’s Donuts to say that this was an April Fools Day joke?
You don’t joke about price hikes!
I don’t see how Donuts lied, they said they had no plans to, then 2 years later they increased prices. That is a long time later.
Why do people even complain about this. If you go to a a restaurant where the food is known to be bad do you complain when you have another bad meal, or do you simply walk away? If people choose to invest that is their own bad mistake.
Not Donuts fault, they are running a business and the business is to make money from domainers and defensive registrations, their job is not to make money for domainers.
It seems that you have an excuse for everything.
Anyway, this is the first bad meal for Donuts. Now people can walk away.
Well I think they are making the right and logical decision, I would put prices up every year if I ran it. I don’t invest in their tlds because I don’t want to be in a losing position. Once people are invested registries have something of a monopoly position.
.com prices will be nearly $13 wholesale in 7 years
It’s called a “License to Print Money.”
So Paul? Does this mean you did not lie?
Do yourself a favor… drop all domains with Donuts. You might also want to do the same with gTLD’s .. it s a big failure… you might also want to visit http://www.bdq.ca/internet
“So Donuts lied ” dude nothing new in USA, everybody lies in this country starting in that white house and best of all it is not a crime to lie aka just false information or slip of the tongue.