big .co.uk renewal price hike at 123reg
A few days ago I got an invoice from 123-reg for renewal of a .co.uk domain name for 2 years. At £16.78 that was double what I paid in 2014 (£8.38 ) so I queried it. (All the prices I'm quoting are VAT inclusive)
This was their response:
Nominet, the registry for all .UK domain names, has decided to increase their domain prices. Therefore, we are updating our prices in line with Nominet’s industry standard.
The new pricing structure standardises the price of all .UK domain names (including .CO.UK, .ME.UK and .ORG.UK) to £6.99+VAT a year, regardless of the length of registration period.
That could be interpreted as meaning Nominet are now charging £6.99+VAT (=£8.38 ), they're not they've increased the cost to Nominet members like 123reg to £4.50 (inc VAT) p.a. and 123reg now double that. (It is slightly complicated by Nominet no longer offering a discounted rate of £6 if renewal was for 2 years - it's now £9, no saving over annual renewal.)
I look after quite a lot of names so this is going to cost me £hundreds.
So my question is - any recommendations for an alternative registrar?
I should add that I did place one name elsewhere as an experiment and found their management interface pretty rubbish compared with 123reg so that is a consideration (although 123reg interface isn't great and can be painfully slow).