Domain Registration - Pricey...

zoro

Wow - I haven't looked at the prices for domain registration in quite a while, but I knew that a .ie was expensive ...

Register.ie:
.com: 14.99
.ie: 79.99


elive.ie:
.com: 35.00
.ie: 55.00


blacknight.ie:
.com: 8.25
.ie: 45.00


Bloody hell .... how can they charge such ridiculously high prices compared to their competition?!
I mean, look at the price differences between them (obviously, this could come across as an ad for blacknight, but it's not - honestly ) - jesus

Ph3n0m

zoro wrote:

Bloody hell .... how can they charge such ridiculously high prices compared to their competition?!

What competition? Who are you comparing those 3 hosting companies prices against for .ie?

zoro

Sorry - I'm a little fuzzy this morning

I meant compared to each other - who are the competition
Sure there are others, but I'm just surprised at the MASSIVE differences in prices

Ph3n0m

Well for me those kind of prices, just encourage me to do comparisson shopping.

Anything like a .ie always shop around

mneylon

zoro wrote:

Sure there are others, but I'm just surprised at the MASSIVE differences in prices

Why?

It's a free market

Serbian

There are a few others too:

Register365.ie
.ie € 69.95
.com € 8.95

Cloch.ie
.ie €39
.com €8.95

IEInternet.com
.ie €50
.com €10

zoro

blacknight wrote:

Why?

It's a free market

80e for a .ie from register.ie, compared to 45e from blacknight...
Shove your freemarket - that's just a farce. nearly double the price for a domain name

zoro

Serbian wrote:

There are a few others too:

Register365.ie
.ie € 69.95
.com € 8.95

Cloch.ie
.ie €39
.com €8.95

IEInternet.com
.ie €50
.com €10

Nice - I didn't bother going any further with the list when I saw the profiteering crap, but it's always handy to see more prices. And that's the cheapest .ie price I've seen anywhere!

axer

zoro wrote:

80e for a .ie from register.ie, compared to 45e from blacknight...
Shove your freemarket - that's just a farce. nearly double the price for a domain name

I never can understand this.

People complain if there is differences in prices between competitors and say, like is said here, "This is ridiculus".

People complain if the prices are the same between competitors and say "There is no competition".

Some people are never happy!

mneylon

It's a free market.... though why I'm being told to shove my free market when we charge less than others is beyond me ...

zoro

/me sighs

Bloody hell - I was highlighting the fact that some charge OUTRAGEOUSLY high prices for domain registration, while their competitors are much, much cheaper.

Next time I'll just avoid this forum.

Ph3n0m

zoro wrote:

/me sighs

Bloody hell - I was highlighting the fact that some charge OUTRAGEOUSLY high prices for domain registration, while their competitors are much, much cheaper.

Next time I'll just avoid this forum.

Nah next time dont be so vague about your point

zoro

Ph3n0m wrote:

Nah next time dont be so vague about your point

Next time I'll try not to be hungover

mneylon

zoro wrote:

Next time I'll try not to be hungover

On a Friday?

Hmmm

cgarvey

Nothing vague about Zoro's point, I think!

www.letshost.ie wrote:

Lets Host Guarantee to offer the lowest .ie
prices in Ireland, at all times! (No hosting required)

. Letshost.ie charge 37.99 (ex VAT). There are some that charge close to that are worthy of consideration, like Blacknight. Then there are some that charge silly amounts of money with HUGE markups. The ISPs, Novara, H365, and the like. Shop around.

A funny one is AlwaysAmber. Despite an EU directive requiring them to do so, they don't mention whether VAT is included or not. I think they operate outside the EU and don't charge VAT (even though they're meant to, under another EU directive). If they don't that makes them the cheapest at 39.99. The extra accounting effort required, on VAT returns and the like, meant it wasn't worth it for me. YMMV.

.cg

yeraulone

zoro wrote:

elive.ie:
.com: 35.00

hilarious.

steve-hosting36

I would hardly call some of the prices 'silly'. Each company has a different structure, target customer base, and does different levels of work for the registration. We, for example, handle all the paperwork and process everything with the IEDR on the customer's behalf. We work to ensure a seamless and simple process for the registrant, which is why we register more .ie domains than any other provider (and won the 2005 IEDR Achievement Award). Some things are not all about price and .ie is far from a commodity domain.

comer_97

what i would love to know is what is the reseller price for a .ie domain?

Any of the parties in the know like to tell us?

mneylon

steve-hosting36 wrote:

We, for example, handle all the paperwork and process everything with the IEDR on the customer's behalf.

And so do most of us as well....

cgarvey

steve-hosting36 wrote:

We, for example, handle all the paperwork and process everything with the IEDR on the customer's behalf.

I was under the impression that all resellers did/offered that. I know Blacknight and LetsHost both did at some point (and my faxing the IEDR is just to speed the process along, because I'm au fait with the process, rather than a requirement). If they don't all do that, then that manual work would, for sure, add to the cost but, like I say, I thought they all did that.

.cg

louie

steve-hosting36 wrote:

We, for example, handle all the paperwork and process everything with the IEDR on the customer's behalf.

I thought that what a reseller is meant to do. I might be wrong here, but anytime I registered a domain name with Blacknight, the only thing I had to do is fax a signed letter to themselves, not even IEDR, and of course place the order on-line.

rogue-entity

I cant understand why domain names are pricey period. You can get a .uk domain for ~£5 and if you go to a US registrar you can get .com/net/or for around the same price depending one who you go with. You can get .eu reasonably cheap as well, but .ie is pure extortion.
Personally I am of the opinion that anything more then €20/year for a domain inc VAT is a ripoff, and that is the primary reason I didn't get a .ie domain and went for .net instead.

Why is .ie so expensive.. and why cant they create logical subdivisions like most other countries have e.g. :
.com.ie/.co.ie for companies
.org.ie for non-profit groups
.edu.ie/.ac.ie for academic and educational institutions
.gov.ie for the government (probably already regged).

/me tempted to reg ie.eu but EURid blocked eu country codes for second-level domains, so no dice.

louie

That's Ireland for you.
I think .ie is special *cough*

mneylon

rogue-entity wrote:

Personally I am of the opinion that anything more then €20/year for a domain inc VAT is a ripoff, and that is the primary reason I didn't get a .ie domain and went for .net instead.

.ie is not as cheap as some TLDs, but is definitely not the most expensive.
If your choice of domain were central to your business' success then it's only a tiny part of the overall equation

rogue-entity wrote:

Why is .ie so expensive..

This has been discussed at length in the past. The IEDR has been dropping the price to resellers each year, but it's up to the individual resellers to decide how much of that saving they pass onto their clientele.
The introduction of an API this year should see a greater price drop later in the year, so maybe 2007 will see even bigger price drops.

rogue-entity wrote:

and why cant they create logical subdivisions like most other countries have e.g. :
.com.ie/.co.ie for companies
.org.ie for non-profit groups
.edu.ie/.ac.ie for academic and educational institutions
.gov.ie for the government (probably already regged).

It's something that some of us in the industry would like to see and we have spoken to the IEDR about it. Unfortunately some of the domains such as edu.ie are already taken, but it would be an interesting solution if it were introduced eventually

rogue-entity wrote:

/me tempted to reg ie.eu but EURid blocked eu country codes for second-level domains, so no dice.

Most registries block two letter registrations and country codes (ISO)

Asok

The introduction of the API should indeed help matters alot as the way things are carried out with the IEDR at present are a bit archaic but its their system and for the most part it works fine. .ie's are coming down in price though 29.99 being one of the cheapest at the moment without the odd strings that some companies that did them at that price attached. Personally I would love to register myname.ie but unfortunately the IEDR want a random number attached to it which makes it rather tacky in my opinion. I'll probably reg one at some stage but at the moment .net keeps me happy

Incase there is crying of foul play I will happily admit that I work for digiweb and that it is us that charge 29.99. I'm not 100% on what other providers are currently charging

misterq

Asok wrote:

Incase there is crying of foul play I will happily admit that I work for digiweb and that it is us that charge 29.99. I'm not 100% on what other providers are currently charging

Ok, so you are happy to admit you are pimping your company's products on the board in violation of the charter?

I don't think the mood you are in when you do it has any bearing on it.

I do agree with Asok that the .ie namespace should be made more accessible to personal users. It's a shame most are forced into .com's due to the current rules and pricing.

I wonder just how successful any new developments in this area would be though. It may well be that they find that particular horse has already bolted off to the .com/.net/.org arena and not likely to come back.

mneylon

misterq wrote:

I do agree with Asok that the .ie namespace should be made more accessible to personal users.

Hopefully it will be liberalised in the not too distant future ...

regi

The base price difference between a .ie and say a .com is down to the real human checking that's performed. Its a fair point, if you believe in the idea of managed registries.

I definately 'trust' .ie websites more these days. You can be somewhat sure that who ever operates it has a claim to it and is relatively traceable.

louie

If you a running a business on-line, .ie is a must to built-up your credibility.
It used to be expensive but the prices has been slashed in the last few months, and no matter what a website will pay back that amount in a year only if you run the AdSense adds on it.

mneylon

louie wrote:

It used to be expensive but the prices has been slashed in the last few months, and no matter what a website will pay back that amount in a year only if you run the AdSense adds on it.

I've got some of the sites paying for themselves in about 3 months these days

louie

my point exactly. If the business is not doing well on-line for any reason (prices too high, low quality design, etc), and gets a decent amount of traffic, then put some AdSense adds or anything else, which will pay for the domain and if you really lucky it could pay for the hosting as well.

Let's be honest , running a business on-line is not that expensive now-a-days.

Rollo Tamasi

louie, not all websites have ads on them

If you a running a business on-line, .ie is a must to built-up your credibility.

only if your target audience is Irish. I doubt very few people outside of Ireland and maybe the UK are aware of what country .ie repesents

jmcc

Well Digiweb hasn't really been doing too well in the hosting stakes against other Irish hosters and it is continuing to slowly lose market share. But other ISPs are nosediving (such as Esat) when it comes to the hosting business. The .ie ccTLD prices are artificially high and if IEDR did not compete with its resellers by being one of the biggest resellers itself, I think that the market for .ie would be a lot healthier.

Regards...jmcc

cgarvey

I'd prefer for IEDR to remain a reseller, for the neturality it offers. It's hardly much of a competitor by charging a few times more the price most resellers charge.

mneylon

regi wrote:

if you believe in the idea of managed registries.

The problem is defining the lines of what is managed ....

regi

I'd have to agree with cgarvey - its not really competing at the prices they charge.

blacknight, what's your preferred boundaries?

steve-hosting36

Ideally, the IEDR would pass all management to the registrars, adopt an accredited registrar instead of 'reseller' model and fully automate the process.

jmcc

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Ideally, the IEDR would pass all management to the registries, adopt an accredited registry instead of 'reseller' model and fully automate the process.

It would be nice if this was implemented. The problem is that the legislation for .ie does not allow for accredited registrars. And shifting the onus of checking to the resellers/registrars would mean that the wonderful, and at times utterly incompetent, applications checkers in IEDR would lose their well paid jobs. I think that IEDR itself would have to be replaced if such a scheme was to be implemented because it would lose much of its excuses for existence. But it would eventually come down to arguing the merits of a "managed" ccTLD over an unmanaged ccTLD.

Regards...jmcc

mneylon

regi wrote:

blacknight, what's your preferred boundaries?

My boundaries aren't the issue.

The IEDR likes to tell us that they are a "managed" registry, however it's not very clear what they are managing at times, which is something that I've raised with them more than once.

steve-hosting36

As is typical in most industries, and most specifically in hosting, the definition of the word 'managed' is the issue