[clug-talk] .ca domain registration pricing

[John Jardine]

Good question.  The primary site is a .org and the registrar is down in
the US.  I'm not worried about them disappearing on me.  The .ca domain
is just for completeness (CNAME) - everything is branded with .org.  If
I lost resolution on that name I probably wouldn't notice until I read
it in the news or someone told me.

What happens when a registrar fails?  What follows is guesswork and
supposition:
In my case Netfirms is acting as a proxy.  If they disappeared and
turned their DNS servers off I think I'd wind up with NXDOMAIN.
*** Experiment time *** I think I need setup a DNS infrastructure and
then remove the name server for part of it and see what the client gets
- never tried this.

The fun bit would be trying to re-register with another registrar.  The
CIRA presumably keeps a database of names/expiration-dates/etc outside
of the DNS resolution infrastructure itself.  In that scenario I'd have
to pay again, convince the new registrar & CIRA that I'm the legitimate
owner and have CIRA change registrar info to the new guys.


On Fri, 2009-01-23 at 00:34 -0600, clug at matthew.mulrooney.ca wrote:
> At such low margins, what happens when your registrar goes belly up? 
> [I'm actually curious about the mechanics of that...]
> 
> I go with zid.com.  They charge me $23/year, and they have supplemental 
> business, so I'm fairly confident that they will be in business for a 
> long time...
> 
> But even then, their web interface is sometimes lacking (ex. last I 
> checked, they don't provide me with way to specify more than two name 
> servers... I have to request that by email :(.
> 
> m@
> 
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, John Jardine wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> >>
> >
> >
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