Nominet's price rise will cost businesses over £200 million extra in the next decade

[Edwin]

I have put together a white paper analysing the knock-on effects of Nominet's price rise, both on the wholesale market and in the retail market (using the declared "new pricing" of large registrars to model the effects of the latter)

As you will see, the net result is an extra burden of over £20 million pounds a year to registrants (across the whole UK namespace).

NOTE: I have not included the effects of the introduction of .uk, which would ratchet the above figure up several-fold.

The white paper:
http://www.mydomainnames.co.uk/pricerise.pdf

The data behind it:
http://www.mydomainnames.co.uk/registry_old_new_prices.xls

Please feel free to disseminate as you see fit.

Corrections always welcome - there are a LOT of formulas in the underlying sheet, so it's quite possible there's "fat finger" typing syndrome somewhere!

 

[boxfish]

Who are you hoping gets behind you on this?

I can see why for domainers with large portfolios it's a big concern but for 99% of businesses, even after the price increase, the actual expense is so small there are probably 100s of things they can do to save substantially more money that they already can't be bothered doing.

 

[Edwin]

Who are you hoping gets behind you on this?

I can see why for domainers with large portfolios it's a big concern but for 99% of businesses, even after the price increase, the actual expense is so small there are probably 100s of things they can do to save substantially more money that they already can't be bothered doing.

I'm not 100% sure, but I know at least one person has contacted their MP about it already. I've just provided the ammo for people to use if they see fit, based on as much actual data as I could put together (rather than "opinion" which is a very weak foundation on which to build an argument)

£200 million isn't peanuts, no matter how you divvy it up. And it's all extra burden on business, for zero extra benefit.

Not to mention the fact that if every .co.uk registrant takes up the right to their .uk that's going to add another £50+ million a year in costs, for near-zero benefit (I left that out of my white paper as it's impossible to model what the actual take-up will be)

I also don't think that many people understood how much greater than 25p the actual price rise turns out to be - perhaps not even inside Nominet (unless their teams are scouring the blogs, they won't have seen the new registrar pricing)

 

[Sound]

The £12 transfer fee is a much bigger rip off for business than the rise in domain renewals but domainers seem silent in comparison to all the latest noise.

 

[Edwin]

The £12 transfer fee is a much bigger rip off for business than the rise in domain renewals but domainers seem silent in comparison to all the latest noise.

That's a ridiculous assertion.

The price rise is going to cost businesses £21,000,000 more a year. It takes the average domain from £3.98+VAT to £5.87+VAT per year.

How many domain transfers do you think there are?

 

[davedevelopment]

Who are you hoping gets behind you on this?

I can see why for domainers with large portfolios it's a big concern but for 99% of businesses, even after the price increase, the actual expense is so small there are probably 100s of things they can do to save substantially more money that they already can't be bothered doing.

Agreed.

 

[Edwin]

I don't understand what you're getting at? I haven't spoken to anyone, nor did I see the need to. I've just taken publicly accessible stats and data, and crunched the numbers.

Statistics are unambiguous. That's the great thing about them!

Nobody's obliging anyone to read my report. Nobody's obliging anyone to do anything after reading it. But for the first time there's a clear assessment of how the Nominet price rise translates into an actual impact across the whole UK namespace. Just thought that might be useful and, perhaps, even interesting...

 

[Sound]

That's a ridiculous assertion.

The price rise is going to cost businesses £21,000,000 more a year. It takes the average domain from £3.98+VAT to £5.87+VAT per year.

How many domain transfers do you think there are?

how many domains do you think they own?

 

[Edwin]

So how much extra vat revenue will the uk see, how much extra corporation tax? How many jobs will be secured, how many charities will benefit from the rise?

Your reports are legendary Edwin but even statistical analysis can look biased.

Bias is everywhere.

I just tried to keep the model as simple as I possibly could while still keeping it "true". Feel free to interpret it differently - businesses are still going to be out of pocket an extra £20 million regardless

 

[Edwin]

how many domains do you think they own?

10,660,818 as of the end of January 2016.
http://www.nominet.uk/news/reports-statistics/uk-register-statistics-2016/

 

[ian]

Well I for one will say thank you to Edwin for an incredibly detailed and interesting resource put together, cannot have been easy. Impact on me is so minimal that it may just mean going without that extra slice of chocolate cake! What I'm less delighted about is why Nominet need to raise this extra funding (we know why!) and how these high level registrar executives sitting on the Nominet board must be delighted with yet another boat they've just acquired!

 

[Edwin]

Well I for one will say thank you to Edwin for an incredibly detailed and interesting resource put together, cannot have been easy. Impact on me is so minimal that it may just mean going without that extra slice of chocolate cake! What I'm less delighted about is why Nominet need to raise this extra funding (we know why!) and how these high level registrar executives sitting on the Nominet board must be delighted with yet another boat they've just acquired!

Thanks, Ian. Yes, it took a surprisingly long time, mainly crawling cell by cell through the Excel again and again trying to make sure that the formulas were right.

And with that, I'm off to do something else... I need a break from it for a bit!

 

[Sound]

And with that, I'm off to do something else... I need a break from it for a bit!

How about do what every other business has to do when faced with change stop moaning and sell more domains.

 

[jasman]

I am amazed that people are criticising Edwin rather than the real culprit here, Nominet. The fact that they have been making so much money that they decided to give £millions of it away, rather than reduce wholesale prices in line with the lower cost per domain is bad enough. But hiking prices up 50% further on top, creating even greater excesses of cash inside the "non-profit's" coffers is laughable for a non-profit and clearly against members' interests and the public's interest. And was it not interesting that they simply announced that they would hike prices up 50% rather than propose it to members? They are surely behaving like an unregulated monopoly.

Well done to Edwin for drawing attention to the magnitude of the effects of the price rise. Edwin have you emailed the Register about it? I'm sure they would be interested in doing a story on it.

 

[monaghan]

Agreed,

I'm still waiting for Nominet to tell us members what it needs the cash for given that it already pours excess cash into the trust as it has too much in the pot already.

 

[atlas]

Thanks Edwin - much appreciated!

 

[Stephen]

Thanks Edwin

Thanks Edwin for all the effort and publishing the data you collected.

This goes so much further than self-interest.

Many of the portfolio holders have just paid up in advance by extending renewals on premium domains up to 10 years so avoiding the price increase.
And dropping a % of their portfolios, so it is only a cash flow issue and actually a saving created by non future renewals.

Nominet is a monopoly of a national asset that's actions are creating millions of £'s for those that control Nominet and that should be exposed
and if this is allowed to continue unchecked, what is next?

Thanks again Edwin.

Stephen

 

[RobM]

edited by request of my sister lol Needless to say I'm not surprised. Now nominet can raise prices whenever they feel like it.

 

[Stephen]

fundamental root difference between us

... ....I'm also not sure I personally concur that .uk is a simply a national asset. .....

Well there we have the fundamental root difference between us.

Nominet was given for FREE the ability to register UK domains.

I believe Nominet is a custodian of that asset,
once you don't believe that then everything Nominet is doing now would make sense.

Nominet was set up as a member company to protect the UK namespace and the diverse interests.
Nominet is now effectively run to a small number of organizations that sell the domains on,
the registrant is not effectively heard or considered.

Nominet is a not for profit organization, yet Nominet are going full out to act like a commercial company
and further the interests of Nominet and the organizations that control the votes.

All the above is just my opinion.

Stephen

 

[Edwin]

I'm also not sure I personally concur that .uk is a simply a national asset.

Phew, then lucky you're an NED there to keep Nominet in line and protect registrant interests. Oh, wait...