Uniregistry Repricing?

[Name Trader]

I just received this email from Uniregistry which seems a bit short on details. What does anyone else think about this.....

We’re adjusting our pricing on October 31st.
Uniregistry is adjusting domain prices to more accurately reflect the value of our platform. Users are already paying less at Uniregistry than anywhere else, and you can keep paying less by simply starting a Domain Perks subscription.

Because of your loyalty we’re offering you early access with special pricing.

 

[Rob Monster]

FYI, there are no club/plan/prime membership fees at Epik and there will not be. Transfers are done at cost. NamePro users are eligible for at-cost renewal and registration pricing even if most of their domains are still at other registrars. You can even add all of your external domains and use our DNS and forwarding for free. Approved customers can also use our paid parking and list their external domains for sale in the Epik marketplace.

 

[alcy]

I think we have to wait to see how this plays out. These are special offers. Presumably these will go up on 1st Nov

yeah... so if the special is lame.. what do you call the regular deal?

let me think.. oh yeah.. ripoff

 

[Rob Monster]

Interesting
One thing I love and hate about Epik is Rob's magic hat, which he's constantly getting news about useful and often free services out from... I guess that keeping Epik's clients informed through a newsletter wouldn't be as much fun

Rob, could you elaborate on how this service works in practice, specifically with regard to transfers out of NetSol?

I was a little late to NetSol's $1 party, consequently have yet to make any transfers out after the initial 60 days are up. I have heard this is no trivial pursuit. My understanding is that there is no facility in their control panel to get Auth-Codes - you need to go hat in hand and ask their support and they are manually sent after a few days "waiting period"...?

To those who had transferred out of NetSol: have I got this about right? Any problem asking them to unlock multiple, say 20 or 50 domains, and getting multiple Auth-Codes at once?

This might actually be better off than getting this done one by one in a control panel

So at what point does Epik's Transfer Concierge come into play exactly? Once the codes are sent to me, the rest should be pretty straightforward. It's getting the codes, that sounds a bit tedious, but I can't see how a third party (like Epik's Transfer Concierge) can help at this initial stage..?

With Epik's Transfer Concierge, you give us your NetSol login and we retrieve the auth codes. It is a manual deal but we have tools and processes that are faster. It is tedious by design but there are countermeasures.

 

[tonyk2000]

Must be a marketing experiment. It is somewhat natural to play with pricing models... So why not to try? Similar to an experiment with Uni (as a registry) announcing price increase on some new strings (.guitars, .sexy etc), but they lost GoDaddy and I think had some staff changes as the result.

Very risky however. Indeed, who are their customers? A lot domainers will leave, as there are comparable alternatives. Some may stay, and will pay asking monthly membership fee (such as those who are using the sales platform with instant transfer). Endusers? No enduser will pay membership fee and enduser prices are already high.

Platform advantages? With all due respect, the platform is still buggy. Unfortunately. I reported various bugs, nobody bothered to fix them. Basic functionality works (not always), advanced functionality may or may not work. An easy example - tasks in "task manager" may be stalled forever.

A real advantage is a safe Cayman jurisdiction. No questions here. A limited number of domains should be better "located" as far from U.S. as possible. If not on registry level (no .com) - then on registrar level. Such as something referring to "Cuba travel" or the like. Uniregistry customers with such domains will also look for alternatives now, and will find other serious non-U.S. based registrars (Hover/Tucows, EasyDNS, Internet.bs - just to name a few).

Good luck to Uni though.

 

[Domains - Wanted]

... And I admit that I stopped using Uniregistry Brokerage some time ago, (too many issues, including but not limited to new brokers who I think are not trained well).

From a buyer's perspective, my impression is that some of them are not real people, but chatbots... if I'm wrong, then hats off to Uniregistry for taking the time to find and hire mentally challenged individuals or training them to behave like such

Here's a brief of a typical broker (sic!) interaction after my making an enquiry about a domain:

- following some back and forth, resulting in my losing interest and very clearly communicating my disinterest in further pointless "negotiation"***...

- the broker ignores me and continues to spam me with repeated interrogatories for months!

- after my not replying for like half a year to this spam, the broker asks whether he should close the case... I reply to this reasonable question: yes, please do that, thanks...

- one week later the spam starts all over again as if the previous interchange never took place!

***) their brokers' idea of negotiation is pitching a crazy price ($xx,xxx no matter what domain) and sticking to it come hell or high water, only repeating their pitch ad nauseum. Here's an example of one such $xx,xxx domain: companylimited.com. Solid name, yes. Worth $xx,xxx... okay, well, good luck with that!

All in all, Uniregistry just makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time

 

[JayT]

There is a lot of language suggesting prices are going up.
"Uniregistry is adjusting domain prices to more accurately reflect the value of our platform."
Nice one. Do you think they would 'reflect the value' of their platform to you by lowering prices?

Terrible writing, sounds very arrogant. Glad I never used them in any meaningful way.

Also learned early not to offer on any domains listed at uniregistry unless I want to get spammed by their 'brokers'.

 

[Rob Monster]

As a side note... @robepik as a registrar representative is spending time and effors to participate in this thread. This is great. But, what prevents Uniregistry from doing the same? I think I saw various members who are/were Uni representatives...

Not sure but I talked to Vaughn @ Uni via phone this morning and have scheduled to have dinner with him at ICANN later this month. I will ask him when I see him. It is possible that they are more focused on retail customers as Franky hinted at his last NamesCon keynote. Unlike Uni, Epik is low overhead and has a longer time horizon.We make our margin when a domain investor, who invests in bulk, sells or leases a domain to a retail user. The margin is in serving the retail customer. That strategy works in the long run. However, to execute it requires either low overhead or sufficient working capital. Most institutional private equity investors have a 7 year investment horizon. By now, I imagine that Uni's investors are pressing for margin and cashflow progress. It is even worse as a public company. Been there done that.

 

[creataweb]

lol lame

 

[Name Trader]

yeah... so if the special is lame.. what do you call the regular deal?

let me think.. oh yeah.. ripoff

A sheep (pun)

 

[Name Trader]

Their prices are not always the best. I just bought (new hand-reg) an LLL in my ccTLD for $44.75 on Dynadot wheras Uniregistry wanted $69.88. OK. This was extreme. But still....

 

[Name Trader]

I use them as a registrar. Which is what they are talking about in the email. Maybe you don't have any or enough domains there. I don't see the actual value of these discounts. Up to 30% on GTLD's may be good or bad depending on the TLD and price. What actually tweaked my interest was they are asking us to shell out money without us knowing what we are supposed to be getting. 30% on a .com at $15 isn't such a great price, for example. And you can bet they won't be even handed with the discounts. Treating all GTLD's the same. And so you are paying these prices in Oct for what exactly? How much are these going up on 1st Nov. It just doesn't sound like a great value proposition. To me. Certainly not for Oct.

 

[wwwweb]

I use them as a registrar. Which is what they are talking about in the email. Maybe you don't have any or enough domains there. I don't see the actual value of these discounts. Up to 30% on GTLD's may be good or bad depending on the TLD and price. What actually tweaked my interest was they are asking us to shell out money without us knowing what we are supposed to be getting. 30% on a .com at $15 isn't such a great price, for example. And you can bet they won't be even handed with the discounts. Treating all GTLD's the same. And so you are paying these prices in Oct for what exactly? How much are these going up on 1st Nov. It just doesn't sound like a great value proposition. To me. Certainly not for Oct.

I get more than enough of all Uniregistry emails. I have more than enough domains with them, and was invited on the DNS platform when it was closed to the public I would say back in 2010, back when they used to send rum cakes to clients.

I understand it started out as a domainer registry, and domainers don’t fall for this, they can’t give 30% more off gtlds and what not unless you are already paying a bit of a padded price which I can’t see you doing knowing how long you been at this. The content in there would like your getting customer support just makes no sense.

Like the people that have moved their domains there, and get those sales you never even hear about wouldn’t stand for it, and the commission losses would far exceed this plan outline which is why it makes no sense to me why would they would implement such a policy all across the board. Another advantage for them having quality accounts is the data of what sells, and for how much, and having those leads which also which is very valuable.

That is why I am trying to make sense of this, as Tony said he didn’t get an email, and neither did I. Additionally the pro plan details for up to 250 domains seems like a deal for newbie domainers, or smaller corporate clients. I understand the separation between the registry, and the market side, but I feel the relationship value goes hand in hand from an overall account perspective, which is why I can’t figure out why they would want to jeopardize this for such a nomainal amount.

 

[Pitbunny]

Just received the email abduct looks like they have been sending emails out for around a month now.

The kicker is...

* prices are being adjusted to more accurately reflect the value of the service.

...with the fact that the more domains you have, the more you have to pay to obtain a discount.

uniregistry.com / domain-perks

If you have up to 1500 domains, for 30% discount off you pay $29/month or up to 50,000 domains you pay $219/month for the same discount.

If these discounts are off the standard renewal...then having a large portfolio is working against you.

 

[healingsites]

I may move to Epik too. I do think we are being asked to fund Frank’s experiments with new tlds. I was never in favor of these and didn’t buy any of them. I’m not thrilled with the idea of financing them.

 

[Rob Monster]

I may move to Epik too. I do think we are being asked to fund Frank’s experiments with new tlds. I was never in favor of these and didn’t buy any of them. I’m not thrilled with the idea of financing them.

Welcome Frank. Your account at Epik is all ready set, complete with NamePros pricing. As your domains arrive, make sure to to activate integrated domain parking so you get stats, monetization but also you get inbound offers with full details on who made the offer. Also, check out the WHOIS log feature that shows you which domains are getting active WHOIS lookups, color-coded with the exact log of each lookup. Etc.

 

[Daniel Owens]

Personal opinion rather then join there club finding a $75 coupon for 1 year of GD club would probably be better, why mess with such a small animal as uni, when 90% of buyers have a godaddy account. Or you could even just on the namesilo band-wagon that you don't need club and pricing is like $8.99 domain even free privacy.

 

[creataweb]

Hmm tough choice (not.) One has a few reps here that answer all questions and the other barely ever shows up lol. I have a feeling Uni will be bleeding bad soon from this experiment.

 

[namesway]

Welcome Frank. Your account at Epik is all ready set, complete with NamePros pricing. As your domains arrive, make sure to to activate integrated domain parking so you get stats, monetization but also you get inbound offers with full details on who made the offer. Also, check out the WHOIS log feature that shows you which domains are getting active WHOIS lookups, color-coded with the exact log of each lookup. Etc.

What are Epik Prices? what are their terms and condition. are they more like netsol where if a domain expire by 1 or 3 days, they charge a fee as a reinstatement fee. Please let me know more as I am looking to move my domains from Uniregistry.

 

[Rob Monster]

What are Epik Prices? what are their terms and condition. are they more like netsol where if a domain expire by 1 or 3 days, they charge a fee as a reinstatement fee. Please let me know more as I am looking to move my domains from Uniregistry.

NamePros members pay $8.49 for all-inclusive .COM. Create an Epik account with this link:

http://www.epik.com/?affid=fi6gu9da4

That gives you the NamePros pricing. And then login and check prices here:


https://registrar.epik.com/prices

We cover most TLDs and are continually adding more.

There is no additional cost to renew domains during the grace period. There are no hidden fees. Privacy is free. Domains that are more than 60 days old can be transferred out at will.

We are very familiar with NetSol. Some of their policies are truly Draconian. If you need help with bulk transfer out of NetSol, we offer a free Transfer Concierge to manage that tedious task.

 

[tonyk2000]

As a side note... @robepik as the registrar representative is spending time and efforts to participate in this thread. This is great. But, what prevents Uniregistry from doing the same? I think I saw various members who are/were Uni representatives... Uni has a lot to clarify here.

 

[Dynadot]

If anyone is looking for a new home for their domains we're offering .COM transfers at $8.35 and .IO transfers at $29.95 for all users, with no coupon code needed, no limit on the number of transfers and of course free domain privacy. We'd love it if you checked us out too!

 

[Name Trader]

I was a little late to NetSol's $1 party, consequently have yet to make any transfers out after the initial 60 days are up. I have heard this is no trivial pursuit. My understanding is that there is no facility in their control panel to get Auth-Codes - you need to go hat in hand and ask their support and they are manually sent after a few days "waiting period"...?

To those who had transferred out of NetSol: have I got this about right? Any problem asking them to unlock multiple, say 20 or 50 domains, and getting multiple Auth-Codes at once?

When I transfer domains from NetSol. I request the domain from their control panel. Oftentimes I find they have a different count of the 60 day holding period than I do. It's not brain surgery. So I often find I never get a reply after waiting the for 3 days to receive the auth code. I don't ever recall receiving anything useful information, like " this domain is still locked. It will be free for transfer on day X". Instead I just don't get a reply,and I'm left wondering if it's still locked or it's just a crappy control panel which only processes x% of the transfer requests (or something). It seems to have to become more frequent that I never get any auth code and have to ask again. The longest I've have had to wait is for 3 requests (9 or 10 days) before receiving the auth codes.

But I'm told by members on NPs that if you call them they will give you the auth codes on the phone. Although I've personally never tried that.

 

[Name Trader]

That sounds like a significant increase in prices just to get back to today's prices?

 

[alcy]

thanks for info

i'll be sure to get all my stuff out of there by 31st october

gotta love how they say "you are already paying less.. and to keep paying less you gotta subscribe......" lol I'd give the genius who wrote this instant bonus.

but hey, I guess thats what you get for beying "loyal customer"

man.. just when you thought uniregistry couldn't get any worst...

seriously, I hope no other registrars get this lame and greedy...