May 1st price changes

[stellar73]

Dunno if anyone else has noticed this but there now seems to be a much more pronounced difference in prices between the registrars (for co.uk at least) since the introduction of the 10 year option yesterday.

123-Reg's cost of a 2 year co.uk registration has jumped massively to £8.38 including vat having been £7.18 including vat a few days ago! Domain Monster is £6.70 inc vat for the same 2 year registration (cant remember what it was before) while Daily remains at it's pre May 1st price of £7.08.

In terms of 1 year registrations both Domain Monster and 123 are coming in at £5.99 inc vat whereas Daily is a bit cheaper at £5.34

I'm used to the differences between registrars been relatively minor (ie 10p or so) but a total difference of £1.68 between 123-Reg and DM for a 2 year registration is crazy especially as DM have far better customer service anyway.

I wont be using 123-Reg again now

 

[rwinslow]

123-reg domain pricing

123-reg has increased prices with the release of one to ten year .uk domain names.

For the longest time, .uk domains have been a pretty low margin product, compared to every other extension.

What I have done with the recent price change is try to bring these in line with other domains, the margin is still the lowest in our portfolio, though now is more in line with other extensions. It is great that people can buy a .uk domain for two years for less than a one year .com. Nominet are truly looking after the UK market.

Back to price, the overheads to offer management of domains, including all supporting architecture, free one page website, DNS management, email forwarding etc as well as our very open pricing policies with no fees to change the tag on domains, free transfers in, full domain management, as well as support costs by our UK based team, bring a very small profit per domain.

What we have done is increase the prices, most customers these days are purchasing one or two domains to host with us or elsewhere, any support cost would counter act the margin on the domains. As the market place changes, with more none technical people purchasing domains in small quantities, we have to work with that.

The great thing is that 123-reg have discounts for those ordering more than 10 or 30 domains at once, bringing the price per year for two years down to £2.99 per year, in line with our old standard prices.

On the back of that I am working on a full domain loyalty setup, hopefully delivered during May, that will give discounts to customers based on their portfolio size, not just the transaction quantity in the basket. For now it is best to manually renew any domains manually through your 123-reg control panel to ensure the best deals on renewals.

With that in mind I expect to offer a reasonably priced product to small portfolio holders, and good pricing for those with larger portfolios. Working on from that the next steps are to make managing a large portfolio easier, that is in development as we speak as well.

All in all I hope that you find I am looking out for both experienced domain portfolio managers as well as those who are new to hosting.

Any ideas and suggestions are always welcome, email me directly to [email protected]

Thank you for reading this rather lengthy reply, Richard.

 

[Edwin]

2 years direct from Nominet is still £5+VAT, so getting your own tag and becoming a registrar looks more and more appealing with every price increase at 3rd party registrars! Not to mention that you won't have to mess around with customer service issues...

 

[Alien]

2 years direct from Nominet is still £5+VAT, so getting your own tag and becoming a registrar looks more and more appealing with every price increase at 3rd party registrars! Not to mention that you won't have to mess around with customer service issues...

Glad I've got my own TAG now, will save money in the long run and nice not to be held hostage by the registrars about and their awful support (e.g. Fasthosts).

 

[Pred]

123-reg has increased prices with the release of one to ten year .uk domain names.

For the longest time, .uk domains have been a pretty low margin product, compared to every other extension.

What I have done with the recent price change is try to bring these in line with other domains, the margin is still the lowest in our portfolio, though now is more in line with other extensions. It is great that people can buy a .uk domain for two years for less than a one year .com. Nominet are truly looking after the UK market.

Back to price, the overheads to offer management of domains, including all supporting architecture, free one page website, DNS management, email forwarding etc as well as our very open pricing policies with no fees to change the tag on domains, free transfers in, full domain management, as well as support costs by our UK based team, bring a very small profit per domain.

What we have done is increase the prices, most customers these days are purchasing one or two domains to host with us or elsewhere, any support cost would counter act the margin on the domains. As the market place changes, with more none technical people purchasing domains in small quantities, we have to work with that.

The great thing is that 123-reg have discounts for those ordering more than 10 or 30 domains at once, bringing the price per year for two years down to £2.99 per year, in line with our old standard prices.

On the back of that I am working on a full domain loyalty setup, hopefully delivered during May, that will give discounts to customers based on their portfolio size, not just the transaction quantity in the basket. For now it is best to manually renew any domains manually through your 123-reg control panel to ensure the best deals on renewals.

With that in mind I expect to offer a reasonably priced product to small portfolio holders, and good pricing for those with larger portfolios. Working on from that the next steps are to make managing a large portfolio easier, that is in development as we speak as well.

All in all I hope that you find I am looking out for both experienced domain portfolio managers as well as those who are new to hosting.

Any ideas and suggestions are always welcome, email me directly to [email protected]

Thank you for reading this rather lengthy reply, Richard.

straw that breaks camel back
I actually can't wait to get out of 123

by the way, after the ballsup yesterday with the admin charges being added for £40 etc on domains that had expired

I now visit my renew domains section just to check everything ok and there is nothing there!
not expired domains and not domains needing renewing in future

I think best advice is to get your house in order before making lots of changes which 123 have shown time and time again they are INCAPABLE of implementing smoothly

 

[rwinslow]

Your username to investigate

straw that breaks camel back
I actually can't wait to get out of 123

by the way, after the ballsup yesterday with the admin charges being added for £40 etc on domains that had expired

I now visit my renew domains section just to check everything ok and there is nothing there!
not expired domains and not domains needing renewing in future

I think best advice is to get your house in order before making lots of changes which 123 have shown time and time again they are INCAPABLE of implementing smoothly

Let me know your username and I can check your account out for you. As said we are doing a lot of changes today, the charge for redemption fees was a mistake and we will refund anyone who was actually charged. If no domains are listed, I should check this out for you. You can email me directly, [email protected] ... Thank you.

 

[Pred]

I sent a support ticket hours ago, nothing
I have pm'ed you

also I tagchanged 5 domains over that were caught, emails said were in account, theyre not
another fail

I actually waste so much time dealing with 123 over years I have had enough
only reason I transfer in to 123 so all on same tag when I bulk tagchange away
saving me MONEY and TIME

 

[stellar73]

I think best advice is to get your house in order before making lots of changes which 123 have shown time and time again they are INCAPABLE of implementing smoothly

+ 1

appreciate the reply though Richard

 

[Bailey]

Agree with the rest here - I hadn't noticed the new increase yet. But that extra pound is going to cost me An additional £300 a year (£600) on two year renewals - I'm not going to accept that. I also appreciate Richard being active here

I will look into having my own tag after the weekend

 

[Bailey]

What if there was a registrar for domainers?

Who didn't pass on phantom fees and charges?

The tag seems to be the way to go - I stayed with 123-reg due to the fact I did quite like the interface and the often polite and instant phone pick-up (not always) But, not at £300 a year - I've got more than enough domains to make my own Tag worhwhile.

On the subject of any registration agent service (no matter what the price) I don't think I would go with one that didn't have an operating history of at least a year or two

 

[rodeboy]

Price Increases

On the same theme of 1st May changes, I have just had my first Auto-Renewal through for one of my .uk domains. I use Domainmonster where their charge is £2.79 + VAT per year for the usual two year period, and I would always recommend them for many reasons including customer service and cost etc

However the Auto Renewal for my .uk domain came through at £5.99 for a one year period. On querying this I have been told that their renewal now defaults to one year, for which there is an extra £2.20 cost, making it £4.99 + VAT per year.

I have asked why it defaults to one year and whether they consider it to be in the best interests of their customers bearing in mind the cost differential, and will let you know.

Just wanted to give all DM customers the heads up to check 'renewal emails' carefully.

It may of course apply to others too, and not just DM.

Chris

 

[domainmonster_m]

Hi All

I wanted to post on the Domainmonster.com front here. Yes, we do now default to single year for renewals. We have always (Clause 3.2 of our terms if we want to get into that renewed at the single rate for our customers, so this is nothing new; the registry lowered the minimum period, so we fell into line to the letter of our terms as you would hope we would. In any event, this is what our customers have always told us they wanted.

HOWEVER, we do appreciate the curved ball of a registry charging more for single year registrations isn't ideal. Hence you can now customise this default in you're "Renewal Preferences" for auto renew settings. So if you prefer two year renewals at the higher overall cost, but cheaper per year, you can have that. If you prefer lower cash outlay per year, you can have that too. Have it your way!

If that's taken anyone by surprise prior to this date, please let our support guys know and we will be sure to go out of our way to redress the balance in your account with us where we can. Equally, if you would like a change made in bulk for all .uk domains in your account, please just ask our support guys and it will be done for you.

We think it was a fair and flexible solution to what actually is quite a complex problem to deal with for all registrars.

Rgds, Matt

 

[stellar73]

Daily are now offering bulk buy credits which (for 2 year renewals at least) look like a reasonable discount if anyone's interested

http://www.daily.co.uk/products/domain-names/domain-credits.html