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South Africa might raise, or lower, some wholesale domain fees

Kevin Murphy, June 2, 2020, 21:18:20 (UTC), Domain Registries

ZADNA, the South African ccTLD registry, has put out a call for comments on plans to adjust the wholesale price of .za domain names.

For the last nine years, it’s had a two-tier pricing system, with registrars on its EPP registry paying a lower fee than those still on its outdated bespoke technology.

Now, the registry is talking about possibly raising the price of the EPP, which has been at ZAR 45 ($2.62) for the last five years, and/or scrapping the legacy system, where prices currently stand at ZAR 130 ($7.58).

The fee for the legacy registry has been going up for years, to encourage registrars to migrate to the more modern, efficient EPP system. Today, all but 2.5% of .za domains are on the EPP system.

While ZADNA says it has not made up its mind whether to raise, lower or freeze its fees, its consultation document (pdf) seems to pitch pretty hard for increases.

The registry argues that an hike linked to the local Consumer Price Index, which it says has gone up 21% since 2015, may be called in order to track the cost of doing business.

In terms of lowering the price, ZADNA says it may help .za become more competitive, but at the expense of its ability to invest in infrastructure.

Interested parties have until June 30 to send in their comments. A decision will be made by the end of July, and any price changes will come into effect in October,

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Comments (2)

  1. lifesavings.online says:
    June 2, 2020 at 9:47 pm

    The only interested parties are .za registrants. I can only imagine that out of up, down, stay the same, they’ll recommend ‘down’.

    Unless we wanna troll and beg for higher prices.

    Reply
    • lifesavings.online says:
      June 2, 2020 at 10:08 pm

      Predatory domainers choose .za for the relatively low pricing. They horde the best one-word domains, spamming our business with unsolicited offers to buy them.

      Unfortunately, they were keen to purchase the domains. We must ‘squeeze them’ on the margins, so that choice .za domains become available to legitimate business owners.

      By raising .za prices 1000%, they will be forced to abandon their early’investments’. Honest businesses can then buy and promote these better .za domains, in real use.

      Study the methods of Frank Schilling. He did exactly this, years ago, and the investors dropped ~80% of his domains! His TLDs are still losing registrations. This is so that end-users will buy your domains, despite some of the highest prices in the industry!

      You can still offer ‘discounts’ (the old price) to your ‘friends’…if you catch my drift…and also, you might lower prices again after all those domainers are shaken. Then, you can suck them right back in again!

      Reply

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