[clug-talk] .ca domain registration pricing

[John Jardine]

Thanks - I ended up going with netfirms.ca - 10.45 after tax.  Now I
just need to alias the entry across to the real site (hosted on site5).


On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 23:10 -0700, William Astle wrote:
> John Jardine wrote:
> > I know some of you set up web sites on a regular basis.  I do 1 every
> > couple of years so this kinda surprised me:  Domain names with U.S.
> > registrars are CHEAP compared to Canadian registrars.  I paid US$9/yr
> > for .com & .org.  The cheapest I've found so far for .ca is CAD$10/yr -
> > but alot of sites are charging $30 to $50.  What's behind the high
> > registration prices?
> 
> <puts on CIRA certified registrar hat>
> 
> CIRA currently charges C$8.50/domain/year to registrars. Registrars also
> pay a fixed $1000/year for CIRA certification so that $1000 has to be
> amortized over all domain registrations handled by that registrar each year.
> 
> When you add in the transaction costs for processing credit cards, an
> amount to operational overhead (servers, etc.), and an amount for
> profit, you end up with a price that's about 50% to 75% above the rate
> from CIRA.
> 
> Note that the cost of developing a web site interface to handle the
> registrations has to be paid for from that profit amount, too. And,
> believe me, it is *not* cheap to develop a site to handle .ca
> registrations. (If you hired a web development company to do it, it
> would be anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 or higher, depending on the
> features implemented.)
> 
> The other factor in the equation is volume. As volume goes up, the cost
> per transaction on credit cards goes down. Also, the basically fixed
> costs of running the registry amortize over a much larger number of
> registrations so the registry can reduce the fees. (CIRA as done so over
> the years - the original fee to registrars was $20/domain/year.) Many of
> the .com/.org registrars do a substantially higher volume of
> registrations (due to .com) than .ca registrars meaning they get a much
> better economy of scale going for them.
> 
> Basically, if you find a .ca registrar charging less than around $10,
> they're losing money on the proposition once you add in the transaction
> fees and other overhead.
>