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VeriSign Mum on Price Hike Plans

As the maintainer of the .com and .net registries, VeriSign has enormous influence in the markets for those top-level domains (TLDs), which include most of the Internet's most valuable names. VeriSign has recently negotiated separate agreements with ICANN to continue managing the two registries. The .net agreement was finalized last year, and provides some flexibility for VeriSign to raise prices going forward. A similar agreement for .com was also negotiated with ICANN as part of a broader settlement of litigation between the two organizations, but is under review amid objections from registrars. VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos commented on the new agreements in the company's earnings call last week, but didn't say much about VeriSign's pricing plans:

If (the .com agreement) goes through as it’s currently written, we would have the opportunity starting in ’07 to raise prices. We’ve made no decisions whether we would do that or not but at least the flexibility will be there. And as well in the new .net contract we currently do have that flexibility starting, I believe in 2007 as well. So there is some opportunity for pricing flexibility in the future. Whether we’ll choose to exercise that as soon as we can or not, we haven’t made those decisions yet.

  Posted by RichM January 31, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter

January 19, 2006

Sex.com has been sold for $14 million, according to a report in Xbiz.com, a web site for adult webmasters. The existing record for a domain sale is $7.5 million for business.com in 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble. That sale continues to top the list of biggest domain resales of all time.

The buyer is said to be Escom LLC, which is now listed as the domain's owner in the WHOIS database. The name was previously owned by Gary Kremen, who regained the domain in 2004, which had been hijacked in 1995 via an unauthorized registrar transfer.

UPDATE: The sale price includes the adult web site business connected with the domain, and not just the domain alone. This will be an important point to some domain industry professionals, who differentiate between the sale of a domain-based business and a single name.

(Link via the Domaining Blog).

  Posted by RichM January 19, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter

January 17, 2006

Florida-based hosting provider HostGator is offering web hosting accounts featuring unlimited domain hosting for $9.95 a month. These accounts may be of interest to domainers with growing portfolios who are deploying developed sites for each name. The "unlimited" kicker certainly seems to be a pitch to domain professionals more than web developers. I've never hosted sites at HostGator myself, but the company's servers are housed at The Planet, a large Dallas hosting company with a solid reputation.

  Posted by RichM January 17, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter

Dotster Offers 99 Cent Domain Bundle

Doster is offering 99 cent domain names with any non-domain purchase over $6.99, the company said today. The offer is good until February 22 and only available through Dotster affiliatesd. Here's the link that will qualify you for the discount. Go Daddy has been offering a similar bundle with the domain priced at $1.99 with each non-domain purchase of $6.99 or more. Go Daddy's standard pricing ($8.95 a year for a .com) is currently lower than the $14.95 non-promotional price at Dotster, which is worth considering. These registrars are clearly watching one another's pricing and customizing competing offers.

  Posted by RichM January 17, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter