The Shiny New $56 Domain Name
The famously over-priced domain package from Network Solutions can now clear $56 per domain. Monday they announced a fantastic new feature, more ads on WHOIS pages. Also known as Enhanced Business Listings. You read it right. Network Solutions would like you to spend an additional $12 on your domain to add more information about your business in the Network Solutions WHOIS already-full-of-other-ads lookup tool. Since the site is already ad-heavy the addition of WHOIS ads isn’t great news at all. It might be worth your time if they clear out existing ads first. $12 per year isn’t much but when you add it to an already pricey domain you’re looking at $56 a year. The price breakdown: Domain $35, Private Registration $9, WHOIS Ad for your business $12. Having a negative bank balance before you purchase hosting for all your domains, priceless.
$35 per year for a domain name might not sound like much. Since it is so high compared with other providers you might expect more of something for the cost. Lower your expectations. The base $35 registration fee doesn’t get you extra perks or services compared with other providers. You get a DNS update interface and information about your account with the ability to add more domains and services. Pretty standard stuff. Private registration is now included at no additional cost with many popular registrars. This is not the deal of the century they make it out to be.
Ouch. I collect domains like some girls collect baubles, but at $56 or even $35 a pop I would very much need to get a new hobby. It is amazing that NetSol can get aaway with this.
Yeah, I’m not surprised by the ploy. It does bother me quite a bit since they cater to a lot of newbies to ‘the web’. They could do so much better but they keep raising the prices. I’ll never buy a domain from them @ $35 or even the $14 they offer on some extensions.
As much as I hate DreamHost at the moment, I at least have private registration free, unlimited domains, plus one free domain registration, slow servers, Greylisted by Gmail all for 9.99 a month. Can’t beat that.
Not bad at all. Except for the slow servers and greylisting. That’s worth at least $5 more per month!! I hope that works out all right for you.