the domain i was looking at is $1.80/yr so im not upset at the price, and its just for silly personal stuff so if they increase price i could just switch to something else.
good to know about the risks of price hikes though!
These comments are either irrational or full of domain squatters and registrars.
This price increase costs a person who own a single domain $3.22 per year. That's conservatively adjusted for inflation, in 2020 dollars, and after 10 years not while it's still increasing. At minimum wage, this price increase is costing you an extra 3.4 to 6.1 seconds per work day, depending on the state.
In other words, if you own a single domain, this increase does not affect you.
It does affect you, though, if you own thousands of domains that you aren't using. The word for that is "domain squatter".
It also affects you if you're a registrar and you're aware that most domains are held by squatters, therefore that most of your revenue comes from squatters.
This price increase doesn't affect me or other legitimate domain holders, has already made my trigger-happy friends tell me they're going to review their domains and let go of the ones they probably won't use, and may even make some types of domain squatting unprofitable. This price increase is good for the internet.
I think the best argument is that I don't often have trouble finding domain names available for normal registration. Raising the price only benefits richer people with less imagination.
Honestly (disclosure: I own some of those second class domains), I highly doubt it.
This is a case where efficient markets mostly apply I would assume. Sure, I'd reconsider if I'm really going to ship this dream side project in my lifetime and I may drop some of those domains, but if they're good, professional domain resellers will snap at them before you get a chance.
And if you think that $10/year is too cheap, what makes you think $100/year is closer to an optimum? Why not $1000? I don't want to get into politics but this is a universal problem.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this makes things worse. Raising prices evicts small domain speculators from the game and concentrates the supply into fewer hands.
This is a money grab. No one in charge intends for this increase to make things fairer. I don't think anyone looking for a domain name should rejoice that taxes (going straight to for-profits) got higher.
This is the bit that really gets me. $2,495 for a domain I can understand. If somebody is willing to pay that, more power to them. But once they've bought that domain, pricing should be at the registrars listed rates. It's unconscionable to charge a premium price for renewal, and even more so to jack up the price after it's already been purchased.
I have been a bit reluctant to complain too much about prices going up recently since in many ways it feels like a hopeless battle.
But in this particular case, I don't quite understand why Verisign needs to increase the cost of this. I can't imagine the infrastructure costs are really that high for this. So I am really curious where this extra money is really going?
Sure it's not much, but I would still like a justification as to why.
I am also curious that I can't find any information about AWS increasing their cost for .com domains. They are still sitting at $13 for both .com and .xyz
I disagree with the others who’ve stated it’s just a small increase and maybe domain prices should increase, for non dollar currencies you’re pricing people out
I don't mind the price increases if it helps to deter squatters (i.e. GoDaddy).
It was hell trying to find a reasonable domain for our new company (i.e. one that we would like to have in our email addresses forever). Only 5-10% of the domains we attempted were legitimately in use by some other business or individual. Everything else is a fucking godaddy parking page offering their domain realtor scam experience.
Even if they have a tiny margin on the domain costs, that means that they are probably a loss-making business. So they plan to just sell to Google, Amazon or Microsoft in the future, and we don't yet know which one of those it's going to be?
Even if they had a small margin, does that mean that there's poor quality support, despite domains being mission-critical to businesses?
Like I'm flabbergasted at people complaining about the burdens of doing something nobody would do, because the cost isn't worth the effort.
Now if they raised prices to $100+/yr I could imagine, but $15/yr is negligible costs.
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