Comments on: PleaseStartCompetingOnPrice.CA

By: Dave Carlson

Dave Carlson — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:42:51 +0000

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

By: Jods

Jods — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 04:08:39 +0000

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

By: My Own Pirate Radio » Domain Snatching

My Own Pirate Radio » Domain Snatching — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:53:26 +0000

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

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:51:45 +0000

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.

By: Oshoma Momoh

Oshoma Momoh — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:50:28 +0000

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

By: ben

ben — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:12:08 +0000

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

By: Dunro

Dunro — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:18:17 +0000

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

By: Geoffrey McGill

Geoffrey McGill — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:28:10 +0000

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.

By: Oshoma Momoh

Oshoma Momoh — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:54:19 +0000

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!

By: Rehan

Rehan — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:44:59 +0000

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.