Domain Names

steve-hosting36

Hi all,

Just was curious as to where people get their domain names, where is left for great pricing on com/net/org? What makes a good service? Does getting things like dns, forwarding, etc influence? What about .ie?

Steve

ps: those of you that know me know my interest, and those that don;t should know that I work at www.register365.ie (but that this is a personal curiosity issue!)

whiteshadow

are you joking about working in register365?

all the info you require is on your homepage!!?

steve-hosting36

Not joking, just curious about what registrars are popular and why

whiteshadow

ahh...
as far as i know theyre all really much of a muchness...

www.domainreg.com
is about €10 per domain per year
for a .com .net etc

but if you wanted a .ie check out www.register.ie
(...that's the same as ur site init?) but it's more of a pain, registering a business name, going through the long process

steve-hosting36

Domainreg.com are US$12.95 for a 1 year registration - which is € 13.70 (www.register365.ie are € 12.95)

Register.ie are € 69.95 for a .ie (www.register365.ie are € 50)

Surely there are cheaper places??

beaver

Surely you could stop plugging your own company?

d4r3n

jesus did you only post this to pimp your own company?

and btw your price page reads "All register365.ie Prices exclude Irish Sales Tax (VAT) which is applied at checkout at 21%"

steve-hosting36

Was genuinely interested, apols if anyone felt upset - of course we charge vat - why would the pricing page say otherwise?

Steve

Winters

I used register.ie for mine. They give free URL forwarding with your account so i got hosting with a free host and just forwarded my URL to host..... which was nice

d4r3n

i thought you would have put it beside it rather than putting it down the bottom in smaller writing

donaloconnor

I used register.ie , i didn't bother with their crappy dns servers so i went for www.powerdns.com A brellent free Dns service company, i would really recommend it. Free email forwarding too.

I wouldn't go for a .ie unless you were a company or business, there very hard to get and you have no direct control with them.

peterd

When I used to register domain names, I would usually choose a company who was very reputable and has been around for a few years. With domain names, one company doesn't necessarily register a domain "better" then another, all that matters, is that I get my whatever.com registered. I think the things you'd need to compare domain registration companies by, would be...

- Real-time processing. My fav. domain registrar registered domains in real-time, so I could be assured that the domain was not going to be taken by someone else.
- Reputable company. If your registrar goes out of business leaving taking your domain down with them, it's not a nice feeling. There is very little in price difference with domains these days, a few extra euro to register a domain with company who is unlikely to go out of business is worth it.
- Control. Don't know about some people, but I prefer it when a domain is registered in my name. Although it is the "norm" that a domain is registered in your name, there are actually some chancers who will put their name for the owner contact. Also, some registrars offer their clients a control panel to modify their whois info, which is nice.
- Support. To have some form of contact with your registrar is handy. I'd only have to contact a registrar once a year max, but it's just an extra assurance to know you have someone to go crying to

i thought you would have put it beside it rather than putting it down the bottom in smaller writing

It depends on your target market. If he deals with mostly business clientele, displaying prices ex VAT, is common practice, nothing wrong there.

yellum

If this is just a personal thing why repatedly mention your company and its prices. There is a serious conflict of interest here.

Why don't we create a "Hosting365.ie spam " thread and you can **** off in there and not annoy everyone else with your whoring of your services.

I actually think you should get a bill for all the advertising you've carried out here and the business you've gained as a result of boards.

Boards deserves their cut.

donaloconnor

Sorry

dahamsta

i thought you would have put it beside it rather than putting it down the bottom in smaller writing

I actually dislike that too, but it's important to point out that every major Irish host / domain registrar does that. Take a look.

I'm redeveloping my site at the moment and I'm quoting all my prices inclusive. So there!

adam

DJB

Especially when you are trading with businesses - they don't really need to see the inclusive VAT price. They do want to know exactly what is going to go out of their bank account including VAT but they know they can write it back against their vat liablility so they are really only interested in what it is actually costing them! This is the ex VAT figure.

The law states that you must either show your sales price with VAT inclusive or state clearly that the price shown is exclusive of vat. You can do this by using the * and referring to it at the bottom of your page - which is what most of us do.

Anyway, I really like the points made by peterd. It is all about customer service. If you are a web developer or designer, you're going to shop around for the cheapest and easiest way to register. Joe Bloggs isn't going to do it that much cause they will only registering one or two. Developers as you know register a whole heap of domains and need good control over them.

I use www.ukreg.com for a lot of my domains but I am getting sick and tired of not being able to write back the VAT from the uk. They have a very good control panel, and are pretty cheap. For .ie, I just don't deal with the IEDR - I get one of the other lads here to do it. I think they are joke for lead time, customer service and [sarcasim]their unbelievable advances in technology and user friendly registrations.[end sarcasim]

Anyway, with domain registrations you don't make much money. You want to be registering thousands of domains a day to be making a good profit out it all. It's all advertising - advertise cheaply on domain registrations and make back on hosting. That's how most do it. Fasthosts do it in the uk. They own ukreg. When you register a domain you can choose a radio button for their dns servers or put in your own. Simple - and most users sign up with them.

Now... everyone sit back... have a cup of tea... and relax... :cool:

Regards,


Dave

steve-hosting36

Hi Yellum,

I think you'll find ukreg, register.ie and others have already been mentioned more times in this thread than us

As Dave says, all business tend to quote ex Tax, this is common to all UK and most US registrars as well - look at joker.com, they charge Vat/Sales Tax on check-out too. I suppose the issue is that domain registration is basically a not-for-profit business, and the only registrars that will survive long-term will be those attached to other, more diverse companies, or those that charge through the roof

Steve

ps: >>Boards deserves their cut.

We have actually offered free colo for the boards server

beaver

I think you'll find ukreg, register.ie and others have already been mentioned more times in this thread than us

You'll also likely find that those references weren't made by someone like Eoin Costello or anyone else with a vested financial interest, eh?!

steve-hosting36

A vested financial interest in cost price domains lol

How do we know these people aren't EC in disguise At least I was honest, open and put a full disclosure on my thread starter, christ, sometimes this board is so immature!

Steve

beaver

Making a loss then. I don't give a shít. You've got a vested interest either way. Stop plugging your company - whether you're open or not about it.

steve-hosting36

Wrong side of the bed this morning beaver?

beaver

No, Steve. I just don't appreciate having to see your frequent self-promotion on the webmaster board. What prompted me to be vocal about it is that this thread appears (rightly or wrongly) to me to have been started by you for no other purpose than to highlight your recently lowered domain prices.

steve-hosting36

Hi Beaver,

As you will see if you look through my other couple of hundred posts, I extremely infrequently mention any links/promotion and treat this board as it was designed, a public forum for open discussion and assistance. Sorry if you took this thread to be that, it was certainly not intended to be.

Steve

Big Thing

Steve

Great Prices, looks like you are cheaper than the IEDR for a dotIE! How do you do it?

Pray, tell us what other fine offers you have going at this time?

steve-hosting36

The IEDR charge € 125 retail, which is as much to discourage direct dealing with them by the public as anything else.

IEDR Affiliates (like us) get them for €50,

Steve

Big Thing

Steve,

IEDR to you E50
You to me E50?
Your profit: Nil.
Is this how you price your dotcoms etc. too?
And are your hosting charges at cost too?

Begad this is all mighty generous of you.

DJB

The cheapest price you can get a ie domain name is €50 and that's from the iedr directly. Usually, companies charge a few quid for having the hassle of dealing with the least technology advanced company in Ireland - the IEDR!

Steve isn't charging for the adminsitration of the the registrations which is good and it will save you the hassle. You need to buy 10 domains from the IEDR before you can get them for €50 so if you are only registering a few it would just be best to register elsewhere other than the IEDR and save time and money.

It all creates friendly competition and usually makes the rest of us follow to keep up with current prices. Steve - have we got a price war on our hands??

I really don't like the way everyone is giving out about this post. At least it creates a bit of action as it is fairly quite in here. We all want to promote our website and get hits - and if business results from it well and good!

There is my 2 cent thrown in there now. All the best...


Dave

steve-hosting36

Hi Godzilla,

Yes, all the domains at www.register365.ie are at cost price - ie: nil profit. Which is real terms means the site makes a loss.

That said, the up-sell to hosting and other solutions, and the margins we make there are healthy, and can sustain the generosity

Steve

steve-hosting36

It also means even people getting the wholesale price from the IEDR can use us and we deal with all the 'fun' and admin for the same cost as doing it yourself

Big Thing

Steve,

We all know the IEDR is no fun to deal with. Bejaysus, you are a great man to take all that hassle and earn nothing for it.

Are you offering free DNS Services 24/365, free phone services 24/365, free parking 24/365? This is all mighty costly so there can't be much profit here.

Man, you are mighty generous, lets have a pint sometime which of course you are well able to pay for, as you appear to have all the money you could want for. Me has to work for a living.

steve-hosting36

At the end of the day, the consumer is the winner, like all good competition - look at ryanair - who would have though they could make money from fares that low

Steve

Big Thing

Steve,

Very good analogy, is RyanAir. When you go to find their loss leader, it is unavailabe. So you end up paying the real price they want you to and this is how they get their margin.

Thanks for clarifying that this is your system also. The fact is, those services, that you are quoting such low prices for, are simply not available.

In actual fact your real prices are not on your website or advertisements but are those charged when the order is placed, isn't that right? So you do actually make a profit after all!!!

Wow, smart one, like it, good on you man, great strategy! That really sock it to the big guys!

steve-hosting36

Why do I get the feeling Godzilla is a jealous hosting/domain provider lol

ps: btw - who are the big guys to sock it to?

steve-hosting36

pps: why not try place an order and see

Big Thing

Steve,

IOL no less!

Wow, I am impressed with the competitors you are annoying. Who else gives you trouble?

steve-hosting36

Well, you certainly seem intent on trying LOL Especially since you only registered to participate in this thread,

Anyway, have a good weekend, Steve

Big Thing

Me. perish the thought,

Have a good weekend also, bye!

sceptre

"Hi I'm wondering how much domain names are - where is cheap to buy them. By the way I work for a company that sells domain names and hosting services. Here's the URL..."

Er, come on Steve. I know there have been few opportunities to pimp your services lately but did you really feel the need to start a new thread just so you could?

Is Big Thing a real person or are you Doing A Boston™?

dahamsta

Anyway, have a good weekend, Steve

Missing line breaks or talking to yourself?

Oh, the irony.

adam

Big Thing

Big Thing is the real thing!

Steve is not. This thread is a blatant piece of self promotion, started by Steve. Hosting365 is not for real.

The Hosting365 is not a patch on the RyanAir site and, unlike the RyanAir site, it doesn't function properly.

Hosting365 has delcared that it is not making a profit with the prices it is charging. Can Hosting365 continue to deliver the services it has on offer? I doubt it.

steve-hosting36

See what happens when you try to offer a great-value service to the Irish Internet consumer!? No wonder the current prices charged by other registrars/hosts are so high !!

Big Thing - point taken, but why don;t you own up to who YOU are ? At least I'm honest in my promotion,

Steve

zAbbo

The fact is that Steve offers the best prices around and by doing this , in turn other companies will reduce there prices.

Is this not a good thing, so why is everyone jumping on his back.
I can understand that his self promotion may be a little hard sell sometimes. But frankly he is just interacting with users and giving good advice. If you read through some of steves posts he usually gives good advice and is open to suggestions etc.

Also as many users will know that steve has offered free hosting to a number of causes that where talked about here on boards.

just my 2 c

also WHO IS BIG THING

Bard

I must say that for me, Hosting365 provide an excellent service. They offered free hosting for IrelandOFFLine when I was involved there (as it turned out, one of the committee members, dahamsta, ended up hosting it), they've offered free co-location hosting to boards.ie - which I think is dead good of them, they've provided a brilliant server setup and domain names to me for my own web dev projects for an unbeatable price, and their support staff are very professional and helpful.

However, I don't think they should be getting the unfair advantage of free advertising... which is what a thread like this ends up being nothing but...

The company's quality of service and word of mouth seems to be all the advertising they need at the moment. However, I believe boards.ie do have clear rules about spam/ad posts, so a bit more care is needed there, to be honest.

mayhem#

Bunch off fecking begrudgers, the lot of ye!!

jmcc

Originally posted by Big Thing

IOL no less!

Wow, I am impressed with the competitors you are annoying. Who else gives you trouble?

This seems to be a somewhat amusing thread but IOL is definitely in a tailspin at the moment as regards domain name registrations. Indigo seems to have been completely subsumed by Eircom. I've been messing around with the idea of doing a hosting company stats page [1] just to illustrate which companies are gaining and which are losing.

Most of the ISPs seem to be being edged out by the independent operations. This trend has been apparent for the last few years and the trigger seems to have been the demonopolisation of the .com/.net/.org registrations.

What a lot of people seem to neglect is that the .ie namespace is actually in very low demand. On any given day, the number of CNO registrations is higher and it is far more effecient for hosting companies such as hosting365 to go for a CNO registration rather than push an over priced and under recognised .ie on the customer. With a CNO domain, the registration process can be completed in minutes whereas it can take a few days for the .ie process. (I think that the number of .ie domains registered in May was about 600 whereas the net [2] Irish owned CNO registrations figure was over 900.)

Naturally some people here will begin to get upset if they see a sales pitch but it can be a very fine line between market research and promoting hosting related services.

Regards...jmcc

[1] Not exactly promoting whoisireland.com but monitoring domain name registrations and trends is part of the business.

[2] Number of Irish owned CNO domains registered minus number of Irish owned CNO domains deleted.

steve-hosting36

Jmcc> the .ie namespace is actually in very low demand

But is that low demand a result of the high price and the perceived hassle, or do people just 'prefer' a com/net/org?

Steve

dahamsta

Jmcc> the .ie namespace is actually in very low demand

Not if you read the (wonderfully ficticious) First Annual Report it's not!

But is that low demand a result of the high price and the perceived hassle, or do people just 'prefer' a com/net/org?

I think a lot more people would register in IE if the process was made simpler (with automation for a start) and the prices were dropped. As it is, who's going to pay 3-4 times the price for 3-4 times the hassle? In fact I don't think it, I know it.

adam

steve-hosting36

At the moment, the process is 'fairly' simple for companies and sole traders, as long as they have Registered Business Names or Certificates and are around longer than three months.

Someone can order a .ie at our site, enter the company number / RBN cert number in to the box, and get their .ie next day, with no paperwork!

New companies, organisations, schools, other traders, etc - that's when the fun starts

Things are -slowly- improving,

Steve

briandoyle

awww, he's selling his earrings to make up for selling his below cost domains.

ah the sacrifices!

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=52057

steve-hosting36

What is it with all these newbies pulling the p**** That ad was for a friend Why brian, do you like them

At the end of the day, people vote with their wallets,

Steve

ps: just to clarify - they are AT cost, not BELOW cost - there is a big difference

Big Thing

Do you really expect us to believe that, Steve!

How about your Nintendo?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=52061&highlight=stevehosting36w.

What else are you selling to fund you cost price operation?