GoDaddy Registration Deals

Posted by peter on November 6, 2007

If you own a lot of domains paying the cheapest domain name registration fees is important to your profitability as a domainer.  This is particularly the case after Verisign raised its wholesale price for domains to $6.42 – a price increase most registrars have passed on to their customers. 

A couple of deals out there.  GoDaddy offers a Discount Domain Club.  Sample rates:

• .com – $6.85/year (plus $.20 ICANN charge)
• .net – $6.99/year (plus $.20 ICANN charge)
• .us – $6.99/year

Similar discounts apply to other domain extensions. In addition if you pay from a cash balance deposited with GoDaddy the rate is reduced by an additional 2%.  Cost of the club is $89.99/year.  If you are active domainer registering multiple domain names its an option that will save you money.  Note the discount rate applies to new registrations, renewals, transfers from other registrars and the registration fee portion of TDNam expired name auctions.

Another GoDaddy promotion is their registration rate for transfer from registrars. The rate continues to be $6.99 plus $.20 ICANN fee. A great deal and no membership required!

.Com Price Increase

Posted by peter on October 17, 2007

This week the wholesale cost of a .com domain registration went up from $6.00 to $6.42.  So when you buy a .com domain from a registrar such as GoDaddy – GoDaddy has to pay Versign $6.42 for that registration. 

At this point even though the price increase has gone through GoDaddy continues to offer discounted rates of as low as $6.95.  When you pay $6.95 for a domain – GoDaddy has a margin of $.53.  Out of that margin they pay for a PayPal or credit card processing fee and of course pay all the other costs of running a business like office space, customer service employees, the GoDaddy girls, SuperBowls commercials and of course the web site.

Verisign on the other hand collects $6.42 and has the much simpler task of dealing with a limited number of wholesale customers.  One article pegs their profit margin at 21,400%. 

Hostway? No way!

Posted by peter on October 5, 2007

Most of the domain registrar’s out there do a decent job.  I have accounts with something like 20 different registrar’s and have never had a truly bad experience.  That is until being introduced to Hostway.com.  In late July I purchased ScoreCard.cc on EBay.  Here’s the chronology of my attempts to have have ScoreCard.cc pushed to my account:

- July 29 – received an e-mail from Hostway with a web link to click on in order to make the  push work.  I try it – doesn’t work – I e-mail Tech Support. 
- July 30 – received a response to my Tech Support request asking for the name of the domain.  It was in my e-mail but I provide it again anyway. 
- August 3 – received an e-mail to advise me that the whois information for the domain had been updated.  I e-mailed back to ask how to log in to manage the domain. 
- August 3 – received an e-mail advising that the log-in information had been sent to my e-mail address.  It was never received so I e-mailed back asking for it to be sent again. 
- August 6 – received an e-mail advising me that log-in information had been sent to my e-mail.  It was never received so I e-mailed back asking that it be sent again. 
- August 8 – received an e-mail advising that the log-in information had been sent to me by e-mail.  It was never received so I e-mailed back asking that it be sent again. 
- August 16 – Support e-mails me the log-in information for the person who was pushing me the domain.  I’m honest – I don’t want all his domains – just the one I purchased.  I e-mail Hostway again. 
- August 20 – I am advised that I am e-mailing the wrong department.  I need to be talking with Billing. 
- August 23 – receive an e-mail from Support saying they understand what needs to be done.  They will be working with billing to get this resolved.
- August 27 – receive another e-mail from Tech Support asking me to contact the Billing department directly.
- August 30 – receive an e-mail from Billing advising the push to my existing account is almost complete!  All I have to do is provided a few pieces of information to verify my identity.  I provide the requested information almost immediately.
- September 14 – given a form to fill out and advised that there is a $19.95 “Domain Separation Fee”.  I responded requesting that the fee be waived given Hostway’s repeated promise to make the domain push work.  No response was ever received and I officially gave up on having on the domain pushed to my account. 

 One thing’s for sure – after six weeks of broken promises – I was certainly not going to send Hostway $19.95.