GoDaddy increases DDC price 2x - $240 a year

[Michael M]

Godaddy is doubling their price for the DDC this year... I am highly disappointed! I have been with them forever.

I feel this is 100% due to their Expired Auctions... They know they have us. If you do the math you might be inclined to write this off as you can make your money back from auction purchases. But to me it feels like I am being extorted. A 2x price increase over 1 year seems greedy!

This year:

Last Year:

 

[bmugford]

The screenshot by the OP seems to show it was going to auto-renew at the higher price.

Was GoDaddy planning on letting people know about this, or just autorenewing at 2x the current price?

This reminds me of what Legal Zoom did with their registered agent services a couple years ago. They just arbitrarily changed the price to 3x the current price, then autobilled without actually agreeing to it.

Brad

 

[DomainBanana]

If the price is doubled, maybe the discounts have been doubled too

 

[Michael M]

Full original email as evidence they were going to auto charge me 2x the standard cost with no notification beyond 10 days prior to billing.

And the poster above is correct you can manually renew for a 50% discount.

Anyone who wants to pay the old standard rate for the next year I advise you to turn off auto renew and manually renew now while they offer the discount. Then this is just something we will have to deal with next year or decide not to.

@Joe Styler @Paul Nicks - Is this by design or a mistake? Shouldn't you pass the discount to auto renewals also?

 

[MapleDots]

I will be pulling my domains back to a Canadian registrar and cloudflare for my .coms. As soon as they offer .ca I will move them there as well. They do domains at cost and no discount club crap.

I really don't need to pay for discount club and still pay a buck more per domain than I can get in canada.
There are lots of good alternatives and since I renew my domains every 3 months in 4 batches yearly it won't be too daunting a task to move out.

I won't take the artificial discount mentioned by some here because the following year they will have you by the balls again. Might as well take the kick in the nuts now and get the heck out.

 

[BrandChimp]

I’ve hear that you can get it for free when your account is « vip ». I will ask my rep.

 

[BrandChimp]

Okay, so this is what my rep told me about the situation:

There are a lot of conversations about it but the biggest point most are missing is they are grandfathered into their original pricing which is half of the new cost. The Discount Membership is not something that we provide for free as being a part of our Team unfortunately. We do offer special pricing to clients who do not pay for the membership but the membership does provide the best price for Domains.

 

[Bipul]

Its huge ! probably I'm not renewing..

 

[Gube]

I don't think DDC is needed anymore.
Just get the auction membership (If they increase that one, it's really bad..)
And then, use one of the work-arounds to pay the renewals of your auction wins a bit less then nomal pricing (Playing with currencies, promo codes..)

 

[DomainGuy86]

Squeezing those margins at a time when competition is stiff. Not a smart move.

I use a registrar based in some random European country...last time I called their support, I swear the guy just woke up from a nap and forgot what he was doing. That's how much brand loyalty stacks up against pricing in this market.

Edit: one thing I have to say...GoDaddy support is the greatest in the industry.

 

[Samer]

Looked bad.

Now it looks worse.

Statement be cool @Joe Styler, @Paul Nicks.

Samer

 

[Haroon Basha]

LOOT!

 

[jideofor]

Godaddy now sees themselves as the god of the industry and will do anything to milk people. Good luck to those who wants to keep being with them though.

 

[oldtimer]

Anyone who has the existing Domain Discount club will be able to renew it at the $120 a year rate. You are price locked at that price. The new price only impacts new purchasers.

I remember when GoDaddy used to have 99 cent coupons all over the place (without any restrictions) and the DDC was something like $49 a year.

I miss those good old days, I wish that Godaddy would find a way to take care of the domainers who perhaps are not rolling in money, but have been registering domains as a hobby (which in a way might be adding to the close out domains that Godaddy is making money off).

I used to be a member of the Premier VIP club, but when my portfolio shrank in size I was kicked out. I still think that Godaddy needs to maintain a relationship with Oldtimer domainers regardless of the number of domains that they have. That just makes good business sense to take care of those who have been with Godaddy for a long time.

IMO

 

[DrJacoby]

Also, if you do enough business with GoDaddy, you can ask your rep to give you the DDC membership for free.

What volume of business would that require?

 

[alcy]

yeah...for most people even last price was turnoff .. u can imagine how they feel now

what's the auction membership now gonna be? 100$?

clearly it's about more profit for gd ...but one has to seriously wonder if that's how it will go.

 

[Joe Styler]

I will be pulling my domains back to a Canadian registrar and cloudflare for my .coms. As soon as they offer .ca I will move them there as well. They do domains at cost and no discount club crap.

I really don't need to pay for discount club and still pay a buck more per domain than I can get in canada.
There are lots of good alternatives and since I renew my domains every 3 months in 4 batches yearly it won't be too daunting a task to move out.

I won't take the artificial discount mentioned by some here because the following year they will have you by the balls again. Might as well take the kick in the nuts now and get the heck out.

To be truly rich one has to be the master of their own time. I would hate to see you waste extra time moving away from us. I'm here for work as a GoDaddy employee so I never take anything personally however the comments go I'll try and help anyone I can no matter what. That being said you do make some good friends now and again and there are other people who you grow to respect even if you don't know them personally. I've always had a lot of respect for you and would hate to see you leave as a customer. The old pricing is grandfathered in for anyone who already was a part of DDC. If you are renewing in quarters anyway you are getting bulk pricing discounts so it probably won't be much of a difference in your cost per TLD renewal anyway even without the club.
Cloudflare is a great company but they don't have the same resources for help if you have an issue. That being said it's business and if you decide to leave because it's best for you I'd still be happy to help you with whatever you need that I can help with.

 

[MapleDots]

To be truly rich one has to be the master of their own time. I would hate to see you waste extra time moving away from us. I'm here for work as a GoDaddy employee so I never take anything personally however the comments go I'll try and help anyone I can no matter what. That being said you do make some good friends now and again and there are other people who you grow to respect even if you don't know them personally. I've always had a lot of respect for you and would hate to see you leave as a customer. The old pricing is grandfathered in for anyone who already was a part of DDC. If you are renewing in quarters anyway you are getting bulk pricing discounts so it probably won't be much of a difference in your cost per TLD renewal anyway even without the club.
Cloudflare is a great company but they don't have the same resources for help if you have an issue. That being said it's business and if you decide to leave because it's best for you I'd still be happy to help you with whatever you need that I can help with.

Thank you for the reply Joe, I guess I come across as a bit bitter because I pay for domain club and the price is still more expensive than what I get at my other registrar. Now I figured because I liked godaddy I would buy the discount club and my 3 years run out around May next year.

Now the thought of paying twice as much plus the fact I'm still paying a buck or so extra per domain even with domain club is kind of a bitter pill. But when you then get a 100% increase in pricing that is just too much.

I understand with the volume of domains I have I could get good pricing without the discount club but I am also buying domains throughout the year and I liked the set it and forget it part of the discount club.

Because so far everyone has said renewal is double the price. See I bought domain club because I got quite a discount for signing for 3 years plus a coupon as a first time user of that. So for me the double price is actually more like a 75% increase.

So my apologies for coming across a bit gruff but I give so much money every year to godaddy this is a bitter pill to swallow.

 

[MapleDots]

ok but for potential new clients of ddc ..does gd even realize how few people will pay double the price? do u truly expect to make more from this price when already before a 120 price for club where it's all free elsewhere was hard decision for most. ps what is the auction membership price becoming?

ty

The auction membership is included in the price however I did have one thought...


My plan was to let domain club expire and then sign up for another 3 year term (that gives a discount) and then as a new service I would also have been able to use a coupon (another discount) and that is how I signed up.

I get it now, a lot of domainers probably did that and by grandfathering us in on a renewal for the old price that eliminated our ability to shop for those discounts. So technically godaddy still wins because they lock us in at the full price of the so called previous rate.

Please don't get me wrong, if I can get grandfathered in I will take that but ultimately it is still a hefty increase over what I originally paid.

It's an acceptable increase nonetheless and I appreciate it if we get it.

 

[oldtimer]

If you are already a discount club member the renewals will be the old price not the new price increase.

That might be good for new customers, but can't you all just give the DDC free of charge to all the oldtimer domainers who have been with Godaddy for a long long time and in a way have helped Godaddy become the biggest registrar.

(And that's regardless of how many domains they have, just based on how many years they have been with Godaddy.)

IMO

 

[pchip]

Anyone who has the existing Domain Discount club will be able to renew it at the $120 a year rate. You are price locked at that price. The new price only impacts new purchasers.

Thanks for the confirmation! For me, I have a habit of procrastinating, so wanted to make sure that I got it renewed! If I let it expire, then I would assume it would be considered a new purchase, which would be at the new rate increase.

In the mean time, I'm glad that they are keeping the current price for existing members.

 

[Daniel Owens]

You would pay the new price. The price lock exists on the current product you own so don't let it expire.

Can we buy 5 years now to avoid price increase?

 

[darb]

Edit: one thing I have to say...GoDaddy support is the greatest in the industry.

NOTHING, absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. They can read from a script, nothing more; their level of actual knowledge barely floats above zero.

 

[Joe Styler]

When will the press release be available?

Here is the article I referred to as coming out - https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/...discount-club-price-for-existing-subscribers/

 

[Ostrados]

If you are already a discount club member the renewals will be the old price not the new price increase.

But others provide competitive prices with extra freebies such as privacy & ssl without DDC. GD is the only registrar I know that charges investors for lower prices.

I understood that most of your customers that registar donains are not domain investors, but you also have expired auctions where investors pay huge amount of money. So if you care about domain investors and to be fair why dont you offer expired auctions & closeouts at the min registration price without DDC?

Also you can do something very nice which is to offer DDC for free (or at very cheap) for Namepros members like how Epik did by giving lowest prices to NP members (which I salute them for).

The problem is that the relationship between GD & domainers is a bit cold, we dont feel warm open arms from your side, our feedback is not listed to most of the time and it seems like it is just cold forced relationship where many are forced to use GD just to access the expired auctions.

 

[Name Trader]

100% For Sure Dynadot. A $500 prepayment brings you bulk $9.25 registrations/renewals/transfers on .COM domains. No fuss, no muss. MUCH better all round registrar than GoDaddy. And NO BULL. Best move I ever made.