PleaseStartCompetingOnPrice.CA

July 24, 2006 at 11:25 pm · Tagged , and ·  

Tired of boring old .COM domains? Thinking of buying a .CA domain as a gift for that special someone? Look no further. I just spent 20 minutes hunting through the official list of .CA internet domain registrars trying to find the cheapest ones. In the process I picked about 25 at random and noted their prices for your reading pleasure.

These are prices for a 1 year basic domain name registration, in Canadian dollars. (Which are, more or less, just about the same as US dollars now.)

$10.45 http://www.10dollar.ca/
$10.50 http://www.trillium.ca/order/
$11.50 http://www.bigdomains.ca/
$12.50 http://www.canhost.ca/
$12.90 http://www.budgetnames.ca/
$12.95 http://www.domainsatcost.ca/ (”Canada’s Price Leader”. Not.)
$12.99 https://swww.baremetal.com/
$13.45 http://www.sibername.com/
$14.95 http://www.domaindirect.com/
$14.95 http://www.register4less.com/
$16.00 http://www.papa.ca/
$16.50 http://myid.ca/
$17.45 http://www.lowcostdomains.ca/
$19 http://www.cadns.ca/
$19.87 http://www.thinkprofits.com/ (This site was my favorite. It has a video track on its home page with a message from the eerily intense CEO. That is topped — but only just — by the picture of a rabid chihuahua on the domain names page. Sign me up!)
$20 http://www.canadanic.com/
$24.50 http://www.arcticnames.ca/
$25 http://www.domainsunder.ca/
$29.95 http://www.dotca.ca/
$29.95 http://www.fastwebserver.ca/
$34.99 http://domains.411.ca/
$39 http://www.easydns.com/
$49.95 http://www.caregistration.com/
$50 http://www.internic.ca/ (”the leader in Canadian domain name registration and was the first .ca accredited domain registrar.” Yuh huh.)
$50 http://www.canadanic.com/
$89 http://www.ontwebsite.biz/

For an interesting benchmark, the web host I use for MyOwnPirateRadio charges $6.50 USD per year for .COM domains. If I recall correctly they had a $3 special a while back. Unfortunately they don’t do .CA domains yet. I wish they would!

I stumbled across several more .CA registrars that I didn’t include because they were too expensive, forced me to submit personal information in order to get prices (err… I don’t think so), or didn’t actually offer domain registration services to the public, despite being on the official list. So, sadly, the median price in this unscientific little survey seems to be around $20, if not more. I guess many of these businesses are banking on customers remaining uninformed. Time-tested business strategy… banks, anyone? Insurance? Perhaps a mortgage?

Speaking of transparency and informed customers, are any journalists reading? This is good fodder for a nice little investigative article. Why is the price range so broad? Why are the prices generally so high, especially in comparison to the US? Who is getting the lion’s share of business here? And who really is the cheapest of them all? Inquiring minds want to know.

10 Comments

  1. Rehan said,

    July 25, 2006 @ 6:44 am

    I think some of the current pricing is due to the history of .ca domain registration. Before CIRA came along in 2000, there were only a handful of people you could go through to register a .ca domain and some of them charged a $50 service fee. When CIRA started, their fee to registrars was $20 so the registration fees generally ranged from $30 to $50. A few years later, CIRA dropped its wholesale price to $10….but very few of the established registrars chose to drop their prices. I’m assuming that was because they have a steady stream of renewals who aren’t aware of the lower pricing from other registrars. The registrars now in the $10-20 range saw this as an opportunity and entered the market, and I’m sure some are building a healthy business out of it.

    By the way, the parent company of Internic.ca also runs domainsatcost.ca. So they’re playing it “smart” by getting both the uninformed customers and the price-conscious…kind of like Register.com and NameBargain for .com/.net/.org domains. (I have issues with some of their business practices, though, like Internic.ca’s pounce on the “Internic” name in Canada, and domainsatcost.ca’s earlier policy of a $75 ransom to transfer away from them. I suppose some people might call those things good business tactics, but I find ‘em a little shady.)

    I’ve been using Namespro.ca for all of my .ca domain registration lately. They’re only a couple dollars away from the cheapest option, and the service I get is excellent.

    In terms of who’s bigger, this Alexa traffic comparison will give you some idea.

  2. Oshoma Momoh said,

    July 25, 2006 @ 8:54 am

    CIRA history: makes sense. As you say, CIRA fees are around $10 ($8.50 + tax) for domain registration, as of 2005-07-01. Here’s the fee policy:
    http://www.cira.ca/en/documents/2005/q2/FeesPolicyAndRules-1.6.pdf.

    I noticed http://www.budgetnames.ca/ and http://www.lowcostdomains.ca are also identical sites save for the price points. And a number of the registrars are affiliated wtih TuCows to some degree. Would be neat to see a tree diagram of company ownership.

    Thanks for the Namespro pointer and the insights, Rehan!

  3. Geoffrey McGill said,

    July 26, 2006 @ 4:28 pm

    Thanks for compiling this list. It’s interesting to see the price points all laid out for comparison.

    Interest in .CA domain names is certainly growing, fueled in part by a few recent high value portfolio buyouts. But I just think they’re cool.

  4. Dunro said,

    August 14, 2006 @ 2:18 pm

    Tucows got into the domain wholesaling business a few years back… No actual ownership implied.

  5. ben said,

    October 20, 2006 @ 4:12 am

    I am trying to get up to speed on registering a domain name. I read the CIRA info and was researching price points when I cam across this thread. Fantastic! Thanks for the great info.

    I’m not ready to have a site hosted just yet but want to get a name registered, ca and maybe com. Therefore I do not want to get married to a service provider just yet. Suggestions?

    Many thanks, Ben

  6. Oshoma Momoh said,

    October 20, 2006 @ 11:50 am

    Hi Ben, I ended up using namespro.ca to register some domain names. Their prices are reasonable and so far the service seems fine.

  7. Allan said,

    October 30, 2006 @ 6:51 am

    I did some of the same research before finding your post. What I found was in alignment with what you found, so I too followed your lead and used namespro.ca for my registration this evening. The forms were relatively straightforward and it worked well. The only odd thing was the offer of “protected whois” information for a $7 lifetime fee which we declined to use. As if the spammers haven’t scraped that information already from elsewhere. Thanks for posting. It was helpful.

  8. My Own Pirate Radio » Domain Snatching said,

    November 5, 2006 @ 10:53 am

    […] Please Start Competing on Price.ca […]

  9. Jods said,

    January 23, 2007 @ 11:08 pm

    11.51 CAD .ca domain names can be gotten from registerfly.com now as well. It looks like they’re slowly becoming more common.

  10. Dave Carlson said,

    May 31, 2007 @ 12:42 pm

    Take a look at NetFirms.ca who have a sale on .CA domains for $9.95 + Tax and I haven’t found any cheaper place at this point.

    -Dave

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