new gtlds GoDaddy drops Uniregistry's gTLD's

[TRY]

GoDaddy dropped Uniregistry's gTLD's today.

World’s largest domain name registrar will no longer carry Uniregistry’s top level domains.

GoDaddy has stopped selling Uniregistry top level domain names after Uniregistry announced a wholesale price hike effective this coming August.

This afternoon I tried to transfer a .click domain name to GoDaddy but got an error that the domain couldn’t be transferred. .Click is a Uniregistry domain. Further searches revealed that no Uniregistry domains are available on GoDaddy.

GM of Domains Mike McLaughlin stated:

"We have stopped registering or transferring Uniregistry domain names into our system. The dramatic price hike Uniregistry announced left us no choice. Until we can assess the impact on our current and potential customers, we have stopped new registrations.

GoDaddy works to deliver a great customer experience. We now have customers who will be paying up to 3,000 percent more for their renewal. That’s an extremely poor customer experience and does not reflect well on the domain name industry in general.

GoDaddy will continue to support our current customers who have Uniregistry registered domain names.”

More info

“It’s unfortunate that Uniregistry is going with such a dramatic price increase. Regardless of the economics, it’s an extremely poor customer experience."

More info

 

[Kate]

It's not that they care so much about their customers. They don't want get angry customers and bad rep for decisions over which they have no control. It's not worth the bad PR. It is the registrars who have to deal with the victims. Maybe they should have negotiated certain guarantees before they agree to carry the extensions offered by the registry.
GD are not noobs to the industry, they are domainers too. Unlike their customers they could not ignore the theoretical risk stemming from lack of price caps.

They could have blocked *just* the gTLDs that received a price hike, but they didn't. Instead, GoDaddy pre-emptively blocks all Uniregistry gTLDs.

IMO it's logical. Other Uni TLDs could suffer the same fate and that wake-up call must not happen twice. And FS has acted like a politician, advocating out and loud against variable pricing in the past and now doing the opposite. The credibility of individuals ultimately rests upon their conduct.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me

Knowing what I know as a domainer, I don't want to invest in new extensions even more so if they are not regulated along .com lines.
As an end user, I don't want to build the foundations of my next business on a land where Wild West law prevails. Protection for registrants is insufficient as they cannot do more than renew for up to ten years ahead but:

• what happens beyond those ten years ? Pricing again becomes unpredictable and arbitrary
  
• will the TLD even exist by then ? It's a real concern in low-demand TLDs (I bet you won't get a refund if you renewed for several years ahead)

I have set up a few businesses and I always expect that will last for decades. My horizon is not just ten years and thus does not align with the business model of registries.
I don't want to be in the same situation as some end users who had been using Centralnic extensions for 15 years. Don't have to.

 

[jmcc]

Ran some math on the numbers and GoDaddy is not a major registrar when it comes down to Uniregistry extensions. In fact, only 2.76% of the gTLDs with the recent price hike by Uniregistry are with GoDaddy, a little over 18k domains total.

Very interesting bit of work. The country level registrations may be very different as the larger Uniregistry gTLDs have a lot of Chinese/Japanese discounted registrations. These would tend to skew the figures somewhat. From previous work, the renewal rate on heavily discounted domain names is much lower than full fee registrations.

I understand GoDaddy isn't pleased and it was an opportunity to play its "trump card" but the numbers show Uniregistry won't be affected by the GoDaddy move.

The advantage that Uniregistry has at the moment is, strange as it seems, low registration volume. It is far easier to implement such a price change with low numbers of affected registrations than it is on a much larger gTLD. This is reflected in the much smaller percentage increases in the .LINK and .CLICK prices.

The real issue is the gTLD themselves, the ones that under-perform. A price increase isn't the solution, IMO. Definitely should have grandfathered existing registrations, at the very minimum.

The low demand for the underperforming gTLDs is a major problem but what may help some of them is that if the registrations are more US/CA/EU/AU/NZ than CN/JP/HK. This could lead to more renewals whereas the gTLDs with high numbers of CN/JP/HK registrations may be typical early market gTLDs with high levels of speculative registrations that are availing of low registration fees.

Another upside is that Uniregistry is running its own registrar so it is not completely dependent on other registrars. This could be very important if other registrars announce that they are not handling Uniregistry gTLDs. The smart move would be to offer a price freeze to Godaddy inbound transfers to Uniregistry.

Regards...jmcc

 

[vivaldi]

Aaron, rest assured that no company is looking after anyone else but #1

They could have blocked *just* the gTLDs that received a price hike, but they didn't. Instead, GoDaddy pre-emptively blocks all Uniregistry gTLDs.

That, to me, is a decision based on different motives. The civil war among domainers is ongoing. Get your popcorn!

A prefect chance to be opportunistic indeed.

 

[dordomai]

https://www.dynadot.com/domain/search.html?domain=uniregistry.sucks&search=

Creation Date: 2017-02-01T17:04:19Z

 

[Acroplex]

A lot of markets in Asia, such as Japan and China, opt for cheap domains without regard to the TLD.

They will spend $1 on info/biz/win/xyz etc.

That, by default, is a Registrar's pricing strategy driven by discounts to lock the market in, and what follows upon renewal time is regular pricing. So discounted domain registrations are valid, IMO.

Not sure about renewal rates, @jmcc / John?

 

[DaveX]

https://www.dynadot.com/domain/search.html?domain=uniregistry.sucks&search=

Creation Date: 2017-02-01T17:04:19Z

probably a defensive registration.

 

[dordomai]

probably a defensive registration.

yes but think timing is a coincidence?

 

[jmcc]

Not sure about renewal rates, @jmcc / John?

It is a very sensitive subject for registries and registrars, Acro,
The renewal rates for some of XYZ's promotions pulled the monthly renewal rates down to around 7% overall. The effects of other promotions also drag the renewal rates down. Typically a gTLD can expect around 5% or so on a highly discounted promotion but those are often limited to key registrars. The problems start when registrars in volatile markets like the Chinese market use these promotions to build registrations. These registrars/hosters have a very different renewal pattern from the rest of the hosters. The renewal rates are also very market specific in that North American and European rates can actually be quite good but some other markets can have lower rates. When a gTLD becomes dominated by the Chinese/Japanese market speculation, the overall renewal rates might suffer but the Rest Of World rates may remain stable. This is exactly what happened with the Chinese Chip bubble in COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO and some of the new gTLDs. The speculative registrations increase the volume but they rarely translate into developed websites and most will drop without ever being flipped. Some of the geo gTLDs had renewal rates of 70% or so. That's amazingly good but these were very early markets so the real trends hadn't been established. I'd think that Frank has a very good idea of the renewal rates on his gTLDs and the markets where they are strongest. That's why this might not be the complete wipeout that some think it will be. The important thing to watch for is a refugee offer from Uniregistry or other registrars and possibly another few registrars jumping on the Godaddy bandwagon.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Acroplex]

• what happens beyond those ten years ? Pricing again becomes unpredictable and arbitrary
  
• will the TLD even exist by then ? It's a real concern in low-demand TLDs (I bet you won't get a refund if you renewed for several years ahead)

I have set up a few businesses and I always expect that will last for decades. My horizon is not just ten years and thus does not align with the business model of registries.
I don't want to be in the same situation as some end users who had been using Centralnic extensions for 15 years. Don't have to.

Completely understand, and that's the prudent thing to do.

Com/Net/Org aren't going away. The reasoning behind the existence of new gTLDs has been emphasized by their ability to expand the namespace as a meaningful keyword+gTLD pair. That's my take, at least.

Some "generic" gTLDs go beyond that, but they are also volatile e.g. XYZ is around 70% parked domains, speculated upon.

I'm still baffled by the fact that ICANN allowed such an open-ended agreement with regards to new gTLD pricing!

 

[Grego85]

All other ngtld registries should also suspend Uniregistry from being able to register their domains, aswell as stop carrying Uniregistry extentions. Lets completely segregate Uniregistry out of the rest of the ngtld domain world.

 

[TRY]

He chose the wrong model imo. He should have priced names at premium and kept regular renewals. But then he would not have been able to get back the premium domains from current registrants, heck he could have afforded to buy them back, I think.
Anyways I think he should have said
" I love you domainers but it's either my companies survival or your best interests, and well I hope you don't hate me for what I gotta to do".

P.s. no offence but .guitar really? Too niche imo, He spent to much time talking up this inferior extension when he could have talked about one of his better strings.

 

[Mr Dobalina]

I'm starting to see that the ngtlds will be successful with just a few thousand registrations if you own a lot of extensions. That doesn't mean there will be a strong secondary market where domainers can cash in. I also believe that there could be a LOT of fake sales to help Jumpstart the secondary.

 

[MapleDots]

Not sure I agree with the drop, as a domainer I need access to all my tools and godaddy might force me to another service if I cannot get what I need.

They probably make the most money on domainers, whe renew big portfolios and participate in the auctions, they need to keep that in mind.

 

[TRY]

The issue imo is GoDaddy upsells other products such as privacy, hosting, website builders, etc. So if a customer has an issue with the domain name it directly affects their other revenue sources, .. not the least of which the upset customers that find out to keep the website they built and marketed will cost dramatically more and their only option would be to change their website address.

Uniregistry did what they felt was best for them.
GoDaddy did what was best for them.

Imo I think it may be likely in the future that GoDaddy may require a certain guarantee from new gtld registries in regards to prices.

 

[168]

I do business with both GD and Uni
The reason I do is because GD wanted double reg fees on my premiums than Uni wanted.
The reason I do is because the Uni platform gets higher sales prices than GD IMHO better quality buyers.
It's a bit hypocritical for GD to take this kind of stand when they have been double dipping for quite some time.
If GD was upfront with customers "we are charging double because we can" they would get the same backlash.

 

[AIS01]

GOOD JOB GODADDY...

 

[AutoDealer]

Sudden price increases of up to 3000% is "fair-play" to you?

I suppose this is a desperate move to bring more value to the gTLD's.

 

[AuctionBio]

GoDaddy dropped Uniregistry's gTLD's today.

World’s largest domain name registrar will no longer carry Uniregistry’s top level domains.

GoDaddy has stopped selling Uniregistry top level domain names after Uniregistry announced a wholesale price hike effective this coming August.

This afternoon I tried to transfer a .click domain name to GoDaddy but got an error that the domain couldn’t be transferred. .Click is a Uniregistry domain. Further searches revealed that no Uniregistry domains are available on GoDaddy.

More info

I think good and +ve move from GD, my ratings of gd are not high, but this move improved that a bit.
@Brandingtheweb.com, Thanks for sharing this info

 

[Acroplex]

I do business with both GD and Uni
The reason I do is because GD wanted double reg fees on my premiums than Uni wanted.
The reason I do is because the Uni platform gets higher sales prices than GD IMHO better quality buyers.
It's a bit hypocritical for GD to take this kind of stand when they have been double dipping for quite some time.
If GD was upfront with customers "we are charging double because we can" they would get the same backlash.

You nailed it. It was a decision based solely on revenue stream.

When the wholesale pricing from Uniregistry increases, GoDaddy takes in less money. They also cut off Uniregistry completely, not just the gTLDs that will have their pricing increase.

I'm guessing there are underlying issues and this was just an excuse.

 

[FreshAvails.com]

The price increases were very steep but I am not "offended" or anything. The renewal price are not that high of a burden for a small business but too high for domain investors. This is a move to push domainers out of these tlds and see where the true market for these extensions is. Some may die but others might flourish at low numbers but high margin. I can see value in the uniregistry strategy.