On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 10:50:01PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Now on a different level, what do you say to a customer who complains when > you tell them your price of say $14.95 which seems to be pretty standard for > OpenSRS resellers, and despite the fact that you are underselling Verisign > considerably, they respond that that is twice as much as someone else. Names > that I hear are dotster, enom and today "sharpregister.com" I took a look at > their site and they offer resellers a $6.99 wholesale price and direct to > customers for $8.88
For a price difference that works out to about fifty cents per month. Well, if your prospective customers are penny pinching that much, more power to 'em. Our usual response to queries like this is that if they choose to use a different company as their registrar, we won't be able to assist them in anything relating to that service. We tell 'em that if they're comfortable managing their whois data and DNS servers themselves, or if they're confident that the customer service department of <insert registrar here> can help them through the rough spots, they are free to save a couple of bucks. > that way. They are looking for the best deal and while you can convince them > about quality of service and infrastructure for hosting, it seems to go on > deaf ears for domain registration. Fine and dandy. *We* certainly don't consider the profits from domain registration to be a significant portion of our revenue. For five to ten bucks A YEAR, we'd have to focus solely on registration to make it even close to profitable. Our money is from hosting, and we provide the registration services in an attempt to simplify things for our customers and we make sure our customers know this. If they feel that the extra hassle they'll incur is worth the $5 a year savings, it certainly won't be affecting our bottom line. > That $5 doesn't even consider credit card charges and all of the other costs > involved. There seems to be no way to do this profitably and it's > frustrating to offer it as a "value added service" and have customers > complain that the cost is too high! If you really want to be in the registrar business, look at becoming accredited yourself. Otherwise, take a serious look at where your business currently makes the most profit, and focus on improving service and lowering costs in that area. We consider domain registration through OpenSRS to be one of those things used to improve our hosting service, rather than a profit centre unto itself. -- Paul Chvostek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Operations / Abuse / Whatever +1 416 598-0000 it.canada - hosting and development http://www.it.ca/
