For those not aware of it, popular domain industry research service DomainTools is raising rates on users next renewal date and slashing the amount of uses per services it offers with the price hike.
Rate hikes are common (not 725% in my case), rate hike + slashing the amount of “look-ups” to go with it are not. Higher price, less use doesn’t make that much sense to pay the new higher monthly rates IMO.
This is a big deal for the domain industry! Why? People like me that do a lot of research and publish stories that help the industry as a whole, will be going away. It will likely prevent new people who are considering to do it.
Domain name whois history is a vital part of research for almost every story that I write and for nearly all domain industry publications. The new $99 per month package for DT includes 25 whois history look-ups a month. I do 25 look-ups by lunch time every day on my currently unlimited plan that is a silver membership dating back to around 2006, which I pay for!
DomainTools is an exceptional service and one that corners the whois history market, simply due to how long they have been archiving data. I personally use DomainTools (paid) and DomainIQ.com (which I have a free account with an ad display) and using both really delivers nice results. Where one lacks, the other helps. DT is most helpful when it comes to whois history and the main reason I use DT. The 2nd most valuable service to me at DT is the Registrant Monitor and Domain Monitor.
Going from unlimited to 25 whois history look-ups and a $12 to $99 price hike (725%), is a killer for me. The $87 per month price hike isn’t the biggest killer, it’s the measly 25 PER MONTH whois history look-ups to go along with the $99 a month. The 10,000 to 1,000 domain monitor is a kick in the gut as well reduction.
I will no longer be doing my domain movers, (which I basically moved over to my Twitter account, for those not aware of it.) These tweet’s and my many past Domain Movers articles put a pulse on the industry. DomainNameWire, DomainInvesting, TLDInvestors, DomainGang, NamePros Blog and more sites all help the domain industry as a whole by writing stories about domain names. Without these stories, the pulse of the industry gets weaker and that is a bad thing for the domain industry.
Update: I misunderstood an email that mentioned press accounts “should” remain the same if one was already in place, so some of the above mentioned sites should not see a change in the current account they have. This will be helpful to the domain community and have less of an effect on the current sites. It still doesn’t help general users or future ones.
If I haven’t made my point clear yet, this price hike and usage reduction from DomainTools is going to have a big, negative impact on the domain industry in general if the currently proposed rate and usage remains.
I personally will not pay $99 a month for 25 whois history look-ups. The domain monitors I currently use are simply for writing stories for the industry. Paying nearly $4 per whois history look-up isn’t worth it and I will not continue to write or do domain name research.
If the decision maker at DT was to reduce usage to save resources and the costs to go with them, they will achieve this by members leaving due to the rate hike and lowered numbers to go along with the new packages offered for those who do stay. In the end, that appears to be the goal with what DomainTools are doing, because it doesn’t make sense other wise.
Having a good quarterback on your team is important and DomainTools is a vital leader for the domain industry. Without them providing a service that is affordable, the domain industry team will struggle.
In the end, I hope that DomainTools reconsiders the usage drop and simply goes with a price increase. The current proposed doesn’t make sense unless they want usage reduced.
I am unable to understand the DT business model with such high prices. Cannot see enough domainers that are willing to pay this much for domain information while there are cheaper alternatives.
I have been using DT since day 1 I started domaining in 2003, and they are still my favorite whois search for their easy whois.sc/example.com. I had an account maybe since Feb 2004. The last two years I was able to afford to pay for a domain information service beside everything else I am paying for, went to check DT for upgrade options only to find the good old packages are gone (e.g. your $12/m), and replaced with stuff so expensive for what I use it for i.e. $99/m. Used Whoisology for a while as a pay-per-search until DomainIQ launched with discounted launch offers so I got a monthly subscription and use it daily for about a year now.
I am loyal to DT and honestly love them, they have been in my daily domaining routine for 12+ years and part of my domaining life. But I don’t think with their high prices they want my business now that I have grown with them and can afford it. The higher their prices the less domainers can afford it and actually pay for it. Lower price means more domainers use it. Despite many whois competitors DT is still core service and most domainers prefer it over others. I still think a quantity of $12-20/month subscribers is better than one or two who can afford $99.
Side note, DT just decreased the daily whois searches for free accounts too. I am having to use other whois services. With DT less free lookups, higher prices, less paid lookups I am starting to question whether DT is still targeting us doaminers, or with the new services on the homepage domaintools.com it looks like they are after the enterprise, law offices and digital forensics.
Hey DT, you are keeping the domain data anyway and we loved you for years, why let domainers money go to your new competitors?
Agreed. I will also stop using their service. The rate hike is ridiculous and indefensible for the reasons you eloquently stated.
Hey Jamie,
I think this is part of a larger problem where access to difficult to procure resources are often taken for granted in our industry as low cost, or free, forever. There are real costs to putting on the show and making products work. You start by working at home with no staff providing a cottage industry offering, your customers demand support and services and more features (all of which now need to be maintained) and pretty soon you either charge for them, or work as an indentured servant or you blow away in the wind.
The only way around this is to have another angle to make money. At Uniregistry we’re blessed with New GTLDs and my owned and operated names to help pay for the registrar services users take for granted (that are very costly to deliver and very low margin) .. we do that to bootstrap our growth. DomainTools.com is a subscription model and the fall-off in PPC revenue many years ago necessitated the pivot to charging for what they deliver.
As a service provider (and in Domain Tools defense), their move is probably a lot less corporate-greed and a lot more corporate-need. Nothing is free forever – everything needs to make money somewhere.
@Frank Schilling,
I get the low cost products, expenses to run a business and the shift DomainTools has went to the corporate level to help them be more profitable. That appears to not have worked as well as expected, because now they are in need to reduce usage for “personal” accounts and charge double or more to do it. The reduced usage and higher fees is the kicker for me. It’s out of the norm. Higher fees is justifiable. Higher fees and reduced usage to go along with them doesn’t make sense to me. Anytime you get less and are charged more, a consumer is not going to be pleased.
For me the cost is chump change, but the offering has no meat left on the bone.
A breadcrumb plan to exit unwanted clients.
@Jamie Zoch,
I agree with you. As I said yesterday, this will push a certain kind of research-based journalism in the domain industry toward extinction.
@Frank Schilling,
Writers like me and Raymond Hackney were paying $50 per month for 50 whois history lookups. That’s $1 per query. Now it’s $100 per month for 25. That’s $4 per query.
Look, I’m a database architect. You can’t look me in the eye and seriously tell me that $1 queries are “low cost or free” and that we in this industry are ungrateful for not accepting $4 queries on archived data. That’s like charging $4 for each turn of the page in a phone book!
I understand that many companies, like Uniregistry, begin with a supposedly “free” service during their customer acquisition period, gradually hiking up the rates later on, after the honeymoon. Such gradual adjustment is normal. Loss leaders are expected for new products / services. But DomainTools isn’t new. This price hike is far from gradual. Their service was hardly free before. And their new rates are egregious and unsupportable.
Of course, you mean well, Frank. Nevertheless it might come across as slightly unseemly when someone as rich as you are lectures the rest of domainers about the appropriateness of quadrupling prices overnight and charging $4 per lookup. While you can afford to pay $4 each time you inhale, most of us rely on cheaper air.
Yes, whois history is a basic service. It’s embarrassing that ICANN hasn’t made archives freely searchable already. DomainTools stepped up and filled that void, which is good; but their monopoly on data is a problem if they raise prices as they are doing.
As you say, “everything needs to make money somewhere”. Well, look at domain industry journalism. DomainNameWire is as large as any of the news sites. While writing there, I easily maxed out my monthly queries at DomainTools; and that was just publishing 1 article per week. What if DomainTools’s rates had been then what they are now? I would have been forced to charge Andrew Allemann an extra $150 just to cover their price hike. But Andrew can only rationally pay rates based on what he generates from advertising; otherwise he’d be operating in the red, which isn’t sustainable.
Research-heavy articles will generate about the same amount of website traffic as off-the-cuff posts devoid of research. So that DomainTools price hike would have made it impossible for me to write any of my articles at DNW during the past 2 years. No blog anywhere in the domain industry can justify spending $4 per whois history lookup. DNW can’t. So there’s no chance of up-and-coming writers on smaller sites doing quality research. Even if we can afford it personally, the business model is broken. DomainTools just broke the back of domain industry journalism. Yes, with a single straw.
Ordinarily you boil a frog slowly. That way he climbs into the pot of his own volition and doesn’t jump out while he’s being cooked. In DomainTools’s case, they went straight from pleasantly warm to a hard boil. So we leapt out.
I dumped my DomainTools account today after 11 years (back when they were Whois.sc), and signed up for an account at DomainIQ. I’m pleasantly surprised! It’s definitely worth checking out, and the features are almost identical to DomainTools.
I didn’t like the way they responded to one of my emails last month.
It was out of the norm from past responses to inquiries.
I figured there was either new owners, management or a new way of doing business.
I cancelled my account yesterday.
At the end of the day it’s information and like the newspapers have found out there are many ways of getting fact based information nowadays.
Can someone please contact legal counsel at ICANN and Verisign and ask how Domaintools business model is not in violation of:
ICANN whois terms:
“You agree to use this data only for lawful purposes and further agree not to use this data (i) to allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission by email, telephone, or facsimile of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising, or (ii) to enable high volume, automated, electronic processes to collect or compile this data for any purpose, including without limitation mining this data for your own personal or commercial purposes.”
-Originally posted by Garth on domaininvesting.com
Here here I am all for ICANN litigating them, and suing them for all back profits for a violation of services.
Oh come on Frank please don’t cry poor you clean up well with old lead management some nice commissions coming out of there, and God like power to see every sale on your platform even if some privately is worth some serious value, especially when you bidding for .coms on namejet.
Consumers are pissed, these are the people that provided cash flow to this company when it had none, now they get jacked and services halved.
Not how you conduct business. Unless that is what uniregistry is going to do going forward?
Sorry to hear how you won’t be doing domain moves anymore, which I always enjoyed reading.
Did you ever tried getting a free Domain Tools membership? Seems strange they would offer to some bloggers but not all the well known ones. DomainIncite said this today: “Disclosure: myself and several other domain industry bloggers are on complementary plans and will not be affected by these changes”
@David,
Yes, I have now been provided with one of the press packages. I will likely continue the domain movers as I currently am via Twitter @yofie as it’s a bit easier doing it that way but may put them back on here. It’s a lot of work to do them though, so I will see how time permits.
I just cancelled my DT membership. My price increased 2,300% without my consent. They sent a single email saying they’d do the increase in 60 days but i feel an increase of that magnitude should’ve required explicit consent. Obviously I didn’t notice until my accountant asked why we paid them 400 dollars so far this year and only 50 the prior year. This is one of the most unethical business practices I’ve ever witnessed firsthand
@Ken
I agree, it’s a crazy increase! The only way I see it, they wanted to trim the fat (heavy users at a low rate) and run lean. Running lean will use up less data, cutting DT’s cost, yet they get the higher rate from the ones they do keep. I am a heavy user of whois history and there is no other service like it (quality and history) so not much one can do. If you do not heavily use the service, I would have a very hard time paying.