How do we create an incentive model that kills the “parked domain” industry without out pricing people who want to host a legitimate non-commercial personal site?<p>At first glance I was happy to see the headline because it means it’ll be more expensive for squatters to profit, but then I do sympathize with people using these domains for legitimate non-commercial purposes.
Ted from Namecheap here. Donuts, who now operates the .io TLD, is only increasing the wholesale price by ~10%. We are still obviously not happy about this since it's always our goal to ensure that domain pricing is as accessible as possible to our customers.<p>It would appear that Gandi has just chosen to substantially increase their markup as part of this Donuts update. Our pricing will likely only increase a small amount, if at all.
It might be helpful to look at this as a percentage change- it looks like they were currently charging $42.18/year as the standard price (1), so this is a 30% price increase.<p>(1) <a href="https://news.gandi.net/en/2021/10/enjoy-our-io-promotion-before-this-year-ends/" rel="nofollow">https://news.gandi.net/en/2021/10/enjoy-our-io-promotion-bef...</a>
I used to work for a registrar and had the job of connecting up to the registries, who are the entities that ultimately allocate the domain names. (Yeah great naming choice, no chance of those words being confused with each other.) Registrars talk to registries via EPP, an xml based specification. While there is a spec, the registries variously mess it up in odd and interesting ways, all of which I got to discover as we did these integrations. .io was by far the worst. I remember that you could renew domain names in units of either 1, 2, or 5 years. It was like a developer had done the dynamic programming problem with coins and decided that they would put that in their api.<p>Considering that .io seems to have been adopted as a signal of "geeky tech cred", I always laugh, and think really it stands for .ironic.
A reminder: just because you don't see any meaningful activities happening on www., don't assume that the owner is domain squatting. Folks make use of their domains in a variety of ways, not just for hosting a website on www.
I like how the .nl tld in the Netherlands is managed by the non-profit SIDN [0]. They are dedicated to an open internet, and they make sure that I can very easily move my domain between (hosting) providers for example (and indeed it was easy to transfer from transip to vimexx for me). They are truly independent. It's how it should be if you ask me. When I read about the .org issues and now .io, I'm happy with my .nl domain, for personal use.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.sidn.nl/en/about-sidn/what-we-stand-for" rel="nofollow">https://www.sidn.nl/en/about-sidn/what-we-stand-for</a>
It seems, that .io is rising the price every year this time around.<p>Just about a year ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25534498" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25534498</a>
What's the reasoning or history behind why domain prices A) vary between TLDs and B) are allowed to be sold at any price (think huge markups from domain speculating)?
Any perspective on the best TLDs for startups?<p><i>.com</i> is obviously the preferred choice, but from my perspective these are the next best picks:<p>- <i>.io</i> for B2B, SAAS, etc. startups. Occasionally makes sense for B2C (itch.io, etc.) Seems to be falling out of fashion, though.<p>- <i>.ai</i> is the top choice for ML-based startups. These are really hot now.<p>- <i>.dev</i> for the occasional SAAS or library. Doesn't make sense B2C.<p>- <i>.app</i> if you're linking to a mobile app or have a SPA-like functionality. Not super popular, though.<p>AFAIK, the other TLDs seem like spam/noise. That might just be personal perception and I could be totally wrong. Am I missing anything?
Build an amazing app/platform/service. Host it on whatever tld is cheaper/convenient/some_other_criteria. No one will care what the extension is - especially with current and upcoming consumption models (mobile apps, vr/ar, and so on).
Long time buyer of random domains here. Over the years I've heard reports of people trying to get back their ccTLD because they weren't a citizen of that country and had to fight back-and-forth to reclaim their domain, oftentimes handing ownership of the domain over to a trusted citizen of that country so they can keep their domain.<p>This is why I don't build important stuff on a ccTLD and go for generic ones like .club .party etc. In my country, I have a single ccTLD that I registered with a passport scan and had to verify my legal name with the registrar, which is good because I don't have to fight to get it back in a rug-pull scenario.<p>I don't have anything too important on it, just a few links to projects I worked on, and a contact page. The domain price could be hiked at any moment so I don't take the domain too seriously. (I've often thought of just not renewing it, and retiring it).
A while ago I went on a shopping spree buying domains with the name of our project in various TLDs. I did consider .io, but decided to pass at $29 registration price. Now I'm glad I did, because while the money aren't great, I would have had to drop this domain on a principle. You know, to stick it to them!
I think raising the price of TLDs is the only way to stop domain squaters. When even the lowest price for a domain you're squating on is 2k you can sit and pay 50 a year for 50+ years and still come out on top.<p>Kinda sucks since I have some .io domains and I could only renew them as far as 2025.
Does ICANN already have rules around what prices registrars can charge for domains? It seems like that's the only solution in the current TLD system - ICANN needs to step in and prevent anti-consumer practices like year-over-year price increases that vastly outstrip inflation.
I understand the initial design of ccTLDs but can we just admit it's mostly a failure?<p>People use them as vanity URLs and there is little to no consistency in how they are used. .io, .ai and .tv are good examples. Then you have .ly where the local warlord can decide to ban your domain for no reasons.<p>At least .gov, .edu, .com and .org are somewhat consistent.
I have my .io domain registered until 2023 which gives me enough time to look for an alternative and migrate all my self-hosted services over.<p>What are the best TLDs these days to own that aren't owned by large PE companies just wanting to make a quick buck?
Thanks to their last price increase I looked in to the previously not available .com and .fr for my side project and got them both for less than the .io I was using.
The last time I suggested domains should be NFT's managed by a DAO i got a boat load of downvotes. But you have to admit, ENS's community governance model is superior to this. Its nice that domain owners have a vote in decision making process, where as here the community has no say at all.
This is why I only use .com and .{country code of stable country, like iceland}, as the likelihood of shenanigans on these is so low.<p>.io definitely is one of those cool CS street cred domains, but 2x- or 3xing the price is just ridiculous :(
For me, not having good domains available of hoarding is a bigger problem than paying $55/year. I'm glad there is a TLD that is useful and expensive.