Over the last few months we’ve all seen prices rising. From the price of a loaf of bread to the price of a litre of petrol, costs have been increasing for everyone. It’s impossible to ignore reality – the cost of living and doing business has gone up significantly.
We’ve always tried to minimise the impact of cost increases on clients, but unfortunately it’s simply impossible for us to completely avoid it.
Where are we being hit?
Power
Power is probably the biggest single cost increase. And we use a lot of it! We operate in multiple data centres in Dublin, as well as the one at our headquarters in Carlow.
Over the past 6 months the price we pay for power has increased by over 400%. I really wish that was a typo, but it isn’t. Prior to this year it was possible to negotiate electricity rates for periods of a year or more, but in the current energy market that option simply no longer exists.
Currency exchange rates
In common with many companies in the technology sector we have suppliers who bill us in US dollars. In our case a large number of the domain registries we deal with bill in dollars. We also pay for some software and other services in dollars. Historically the dollar to euro currency rates have fluctuated so sometimes that worked in our favour, sometimes it worked against us. Our pricing allowed us to absorb small changes in currency rates. Unfortunately over the past couple of months the dollar has been at or close to parity with the Euro. That means that we simply cannot continue to absorb those fluctuations.
So what are we changing?
We’re going to be upping the retail price on both domain names and hosting.
For most domain extensions the price increase will be €1 extra on renewal fees. In some cases we’ll be increasing both registration and renewal fees.
With our legacy shared hosting plans we’re trying to soften the blow a little, by creating a new two year billing option on our legacy hosting plans (Minimus, medius and maximus).
| Minimus | Medius | Maximus | |
| 1 Month | € 5.45 | € 9.85 | € 16.45 |
| 1 Year | € 54.45 | € 98.45 | € 164.45 |
| 2 year | € 99.95 | € 179.95 | € 299.95 |
| 3 Years | € 139.95 | € 249.95 | € 419.95 |
With our VPS (cloud VM) hosting we are also going to be increasing the price as follows:
| Description | Starter | Starter+ | Business | Business+ | Professional | Professional+ | Enterprise | Enterprise+ |
| Monthly | 14.95 | 20.95 | 43.95 | 65.95 | 76.95 | 98.95 | 120.95 | 153.95 |
| Quarterly | 44.95 | 62.95 | 131.95 | 199.95 | 229.95 | 294.95 | 362.95 | 459.95 |
| Yearly | 179.95 | 249.95 | 529.95 | 799.95 | 924.95 | 1199.95 | 1449.95 | 1849.95 |
All current clients will be getting email from us about these price changes, which will be coming into force in 2 weeks’ time.
Of course if you renew before the price increase you’ll be able to avoid it!
NB: All prices quoted are ex-VAT
About the Author: Michele Neylon
