Regarding 11 dollar domains. Alabanza resellers seem to be very happy
selling domains at $11 per year retail. At this stage of the game, it
really is Value added that will make the difference. While we have the
ability to build user interfaces, redirects, and control panels for
domains, that is not our core business. As such, we would be happy to have
the reseller infrastructure handle these tasks without us taking time out
of our core areas to develop these features. Reality is, without these
extras that Tucows is adding, price is all you have. I feel secure in
having a partner that is NOT a hosting company (even one for resellers).
So - we plan to lower our retail down to $11.85 (that lets us collect about
85 cents per domain) and hope for no chargebacks. We also will only be
selling domains *only* in conjunction with hosting services in the future.
Transfers will still cost $25.00 because most will involve the pain
associated with a netsol-ectomy.
We have found that those who simply register because they found us cheaper
than netsol/register.com simply look for a cheaper host too. We will
hopefully avoid this by only registering domains for hosting clients.
So, at less than a buck a domain, we are dropping our in house development
efforts to extend the OpenSRS client. Yet we still have nothing to offer
our resellers who are competing against Alabanza and may loose some (for a
short time) over it. And we still do not wish to be registrars ourselves.
Bill Laakkonen
Im1 Web Hosting
At 04:37 PM 10/12/00 -0700, William X. Walsh wrote:
>With the services being proposed as coming from OpenSRS, that directly
>compete with the existing value added services offered by OpenSRS
>RSPs, OpenSRS will be essentially making all the RSPs the same.
>
>Chuck mentioned all the market speak about support, etc, and those are
>good, valid points, but they are not as important has he was
>presenting. The key has always been the value added services and
>other benefits offering by the RSPs who distinguished themselves from
>the Moo Herd of RSPs <g> by working to create and manage these types
>of value added services.
>
>Now, all RSPs will have these services, without any real understanding
>of how they work, without any knowledge or any real work on their
>behalf, and that will, once again, make all RSPs equal, and remove one
>of the main factors that has distinguished RSPs from each other.
>
>So then all the RSPs will be essentially identical, with only minor
>insignificant differences, the only thing to compete on
>becomes...price.
>
>And that will lead directly to everyone coming down to the $11 and $12
>neighborhoods, thus cheapening even the value of the registration
>service itself.
>
>Price becomes the only issue separating RSPs from each other, and
>that, would truly be a sad day.
>
>OpenSRS would still win, of course, in the short term maybe.
>
>--
>Best regards,
> William mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
