Only Dot Club Has a Convincing Pricing Approach

After the Uniregistry price increase, various registries have released statements with the intention of reassuring domain holders but frankly, Dot Club is the only one that has a convincing approach for the simple reason that there’s more than just words behind it: they’ve signed a price protection clause with registrars which states that they’re allowed to bump prices by the rate of inflation or 15%. So unless the inflation rate will exceed 15% in the US (yikes!), at least .club domain holders know they won’t have to adapt to an increase greater than 15%.

The other registries don’t have a set-in-stone contract in place that prohibits them from bumping prices abruptly, they just issued statements which just isn’t enough because 6 months from now, they can say “Due to shifting market conditions, we have been forced to …” and bam, there’s nothing stopping them from sending prices to the moon.

Sorry but at this stage, statements are not enough when it comes to new gTLDs.

Rightside had the strongest statement, which included the phrase “…want to reassure our valued customers who have invested in our TLDs that we will not be following suit.” but still, it’s only a statement. Nothing set in stone.

Donuts has a weaker statement, which includes the phrase “we have no plans to increase prices for existing registrants” which I’m sorry but just doesn’t cut it.

And, finally, Radix has the weakest statement of all, which includes the phrase “We have no immediate plans to increase our wholesale prices.” and the obvious word that stands out is “immediate.”

No me gusta.

Bad, bad PR approach IMO.

For what it’s worth, I don’t own any Dot Club domains and stopped investing in new gTLDs a long time ago. The only new gTLD I own is Domaining.Tips (thanks to an awesome DomainingTips reader who gave it to me as a gift) which redirects to DomainingTips.com