As we announced recently, we now offer premium .irish and .club domain names.
While this has been welcomed by many of our clients, it’s also led to some confusion and criticism from some quarters.
The confusion and criticism is due in no little part to some companies who have also been offering premium priced .irish domain names, but at standard prices. In our view this leads to a bad consumer experience and we think it’s unfortunate that those companies continue to mislead the public in this way.
Let’s look at what we’re actually talking about and try to dispel some of these myths and criticisms.
Why are some domain names more expensive than others?
Domains are a bit like real estate. Some are “better” than others and the domain registries have adopted pricing strategies to reflect this value.
If you want to setup your shop in a central shopping area of a big city you’ll pay more to rent or buy the space than you would in an area without as much traffic.
So if you wanted to register photos.irish you’d pay EUR1000 for the first year, but if you were happy with cutephotos.irish you’d only pay the standard registration fee.
Why are you offering some .irish domains for several hundred Euro when company X is only charging EUR30?
We are the only Irish owned ICANN accredited registrar which means we have a direct relationship with the domain name registries. We get the pricing for domain names directly from the registry when someone checks if a domain is available on our site. The domain registries have priced domains in “tiers” so based on what they send us back we display the correct pricing from the registry. If other companies that are NOT registrars are offering premium .irish (or .club) domain names at standard prices then one of two things will happen. Either they’ll be forced to refund your order or if they actually process it fully they’ll be taking a significant loss on the registration.
Why are you squatting on good domain names?
We aren’t. Any of the premium priced domain names we currently offer are domains that are available to register. They are currently NOT registered. Some of the registries have adopted a slightly different strategy and have registered some of their “better” domain names and are now offering them for sale via various sales channels. We currently do not offer any of those domain names, though we might do in the future. In either case it’s not “squatting” . The term “squatting” should only be used when a person or a company registers a domain name in order to take advantage of somebody else’s brand name or trademark.
What’s the difference between a “reserved” domain and a “premium” domain?
Registry operators can reserve domain names for future use. Essentially these are domain names that they have put on a special list and are not making them available for registration. Some of the domain names might be offered for sale at some point in the future, or they could be used by the registry themselves for their own marketing.
Why don’t you have prices on all premium domain names?
We currently offer direct instant registrations for .irish and .club premium names. We will offer this service for more extensions in the future. However some of the domain registries have adopted pricing policies that are quite complex and integrating with them is complicated. While both .irish and .club offer domains with a premium price for the first year of registration and renewal at a standard rate, many of the other registries have decided to charge a premium price on some domains both for registration and renewal.
Who sets the prices on premium domains?
As mentioned above, the pricing comes directly from the registries. We get a wholesale price and then add our margin.
If you have any questions please let us know via the comments below!
About the Author: Michele Neylon
