Tag - domains

Tue, 7 Feb 2012

Walt

Walt

Tue, 7 Feb 2012, 09:00

no comment

Domain Price Increases

Following price increases by two of the major domain registries (Verisign and Neustar) on 15 Jan and 1 Feb respectively, we have decided to increase the cost of buying, transferring and renewing a domain from 1 March, 2012. The prices will increase to £11.99 per year (including UK VAT where applicable), US$15.99, €13.99 and AUD$20.00 respectively. Our full price list of the current domains, currencies and prices available can be found at www.moonfruit.com/domains-pricing.

We have deferred passing on the price increases until 1 March to give our customers time to renew at current prices. You can easily renew your domains ahead of time and over multiple years (except for .uk domains which are restricted to 2 year renewals within 30 days of expiry by the registry: Nominet).

And remember, you still get a free domain voucher with SiteMaker Standard, two vouchers with the Plus account and three vouchers with the Max account. So these are now even better value. And with all of our domains you still get 5 free mailboxes, so we hope you still think it’s a good deal.

Mon, 22 Mar 2010

Walt

Walt

Mon, 22 Mar 2010, 08:58

10 comments

Domain Name Prices Rise

Effective immediately, we have had to raise our domain name prices from a basic price of £8.99/$12.99/€11.99 to £10.99/$14.99/€12.99 including UK VAT. There are several reasons for this, which are really based on the wholesale prices of domains increasing and not us wanting to take more of your money.

As some of you may know, most domain wholesale prices are actually set in USD (US Dollars). Two things have happened to affect the rate here. Firstly, Verisign (the registry that manages COM/NET domains) has decided to increase domain name prices for the 3rd time in 4 years by another 7%, taking the total increase to about 22% since 2006. Secondly, the GBP (British Pounds) exchange rate has fallen vs the Dollar (and Euro) significantly in the last couple of years, which makes prices more expensive for all domains. We try to keep all domains at the same price and manage profitability across them all as a group, which is why all domains are affected by this price increase.

Many other domain providers have also raised their prices in the last year or so in response to the price increases. They also tend to quote prices excluding VAT, while we quote prices including VAT. For example many providers may quote for a £9.99 domain + UK VAT = £11.73, while we are charging £10.99 including VAT.

Remember, you still get a free domain voucher with SiteMaker Standard and Plus accounts with two vouchers for a Max account. So these are now even better value.

And with all of our domains you still get 5 free mailboxes, so we hope you still feel it’s a good deal.

We did notice that there was a bug with the voucher pricing: they were still at the old prices and did not fully cover these price increases. We have now fixed this bug and we have a list of customers who have had to 'top-up' with a payment to make the purchase. We will refund that 'top-up' to all those customers over the next 24-48 hours. We can only apologies for the inconvenience that this has caused.

So there you have it. And just in case you thought this was a sign of things to come, we have no plans to increase our prices on the software. In fact we haven't put prices up on SiteMaker for over 5 years even though we continue to develop the product and release more features on a regular basis.