Is there much value to long-term registrations?

[randian]

Say 5-10 years in advance. I am pondering the subject and wonder what you guys think.

1) You don't know if your registrar is going to be in business that long from now. I sure wouldn't prepay my auto insurance 10 years in advance.
2) It's not clear that price increases exceed the rate of inflation. If anything prices seem lower than they were 10 years ago.
3) You don't seem to get much if any discount for long-term prepayment.
4) Automatic annual payment by credit card eliminates the headaches of manually handling the task or missing deadlines. I pay all my other bills by automatic debit and it works great.
5) Prepayment means you can't take advantage of renewal coupons and discounts as they appear.

 

[Name Trader]

This all depends on the TLD, and the registrar. You can get half price registrations at some registrars for 5-10 year registrations of .CO and .TV

The only other reason to pay for 10 years up front is to secure your domains. But this might be a double-edged sword if you forget completely about renewing your domain after 10 years of not doing so. I don't think any cheap charlie who relies on renewal coupon codes will ever consider 5-10 year registrations.

 

[Keral_Patel]

Helps if you want to show expenses in current financial year :D

 

[Name Trader]

I think for proper accounting (in a past life I was an accountant) you should be setting up a prepayment for the future years renewals

 

[Keral_Patel]

Ah ehhe That could work Our systems here in India works slightly different

Might ask my accountant on that one

Thanks stub.

 

[Kate]

1) You don't know if your registrar is going to be in business that long from now. I sure wouldn't prepay my auto insurance 10 years in advance.

It's not a prepayment. If you pay for 5 years now, then your domain will not expire until 2019. You can verify this in the whois.
However, if you transfer to another registrar, then you pay for a renewal along with the transfer, so you will add 1 more year. It's not lost, unless you already have paid for ten years in advance. .com allows maximum 10 years ahead.

In general most TLDs allow you to renew for up to 10 years, I think .eu is 5 only. For ccTLDs that depends, sometimes the registration is open-ended which means there is no specific expiry date: you are billed on a yearly/monthly basis, as long as you keep the domain. .de for example.

 

[Name Trader]

If you pay for something in advance, it is a prepayment.

 

[inforg]

I don't do long term much, but I do try and keep my registrations at least 6 months ahead. I found that I tended to get more offers on domains with more registration left. I think some people see that a domain is close to expiration and may wait it out to see if they can hand register it or feel like it isn't worth much if the owner isn't renewing it.

Long term regs can signal value to potential buyers and let them know that the only shot at getting it would be to make an offer. I see a lot of domainers waiting until expiration or even after to renew - I think that is bad strategy.

 

[Kate]

If you pay for something in advance, it is a prepayment.

If you like, the point is that the money goes to the registry not the registrar. Since the name has been renewed for as many years as you paid it doesn't matter if the registrar goes out of business.

 

[Name Trader]

I'm talking from an accounting point of view. The advance payment should be setup as a prepayment. So that any 1 year doesn't bear the brunt of the advance payments and the expense is spread evenly over the years which have been paid for.

 

[AEProgram]

You guys fail to mention a big benefit to having your domain show that its taken for another 2+ years. If you only renew one year at a time than on avg when someone is looking for a name, someone who knows anything about domains, might say to themselves let me watch this name and see if the owner renews. If your exp. date is far out they are more likely to email you.

I would advise you to make a list of your best names, and renew them for 2 plus years all the time.