This is an ongoing discussion over at SEO Philippines Yahoogroups so I’m re-posting my answer there here.
Disclosure: I am an .PH reseller.
I have been meeting with the PH team for some time now and I have been somewhat discussing with them the idea of lowering the prices. I’ve also had talks with JJ Disini and he himself tells me that he’s talking to the older brother about slashing off the prices.
There are so many factors why the pricing has been stagnant for years. I’ve also asked them the total number of active PH domains and though I didn’t get an exact answer, my guesstimate was in the range of 125k to 150k.
First, PH is not the most expensive — .TV is $38, .JP is $99, .BE is $39, .AT is $79, .NZ is $69, .CC is $39. The CNO namespace is universal and the ccTLD is country specific, so we can’t really compare prices for the two considering the fact that volume of domains are way way apart. The best scale would be to compare PH pricing with other ccTLD pricing.
Second, supply and demand — will lowering the price assure increase in sales? That is, will cutting the price into 3 folds create enough demand to triple the sales volume (thereby maintaining gross revenue)? Remember, it is still a business. Take for example the local hosting industry. It’s really expensive compared to the rest in the US. Can we point to a local hosting company that can match the pricing of DreamHost, 1&1, Powweb, etc?
Third, target market — this is in conjunction with #2 actually. I was told a huge percentage of .PH domains are bought for branding and IP by big companies and corporations worldwide. These are in the tens of thousands of companies who want to claim ownership of their domain name before other squatters do. The logic goes like — if PH domain sells domains at $100, eBay, Microsoft will still buy the domain; same way that they’ll pay if the price was just $10. The question becomes, will all SMEs and individuals buy PH domains instead of a .COM despite these changes? There’s no assurance there.
Fourth, protecting the existing resellers. This I only realized when I became a reseller. Say Resellers get their PH domains at $25/year and sell them at $30 per year. It’s still lower than $70/2 years to entice customers to buy from the resellers and not directly from dotPH.
Lastly, and this one’s my theory, self-preservation. Look at Microsoft — it was able to maintain its dominance and success because it had something people needed and only Microsoft can provide. Has FOSS able to shift the market demand and pressured M$ to lower licensing fees? So, let’s ask ourselves that if we owned dotPH, would we still subscribe to the same reasoning against the monopoly that is dotPH? What company would want lower revenues, eh?
These are reasons given to me during our discussions.
Don’t get me wrong — I want the prices to go down too and I am constantly having discussions with them about this (although it may seem a futile effort).
.PH has nothing to do with the Philippines it stand for PHONE and not the Philippines.
Disini with all his banking experience ( failed or otherwise) should know that 10,000,000 domains at US$ 9 dollars will bring him more money than 150,000 at 25 or 35 .
Mabuhay ang Pinoy na hindi nagpapaluko even if he has no other choice in being patriotic and buying extensions that “represent” his country from an entity/persons that has cause a lot of harm to his country in the past and now.
I’ve registered a domain name with them (dot.ph) after I have registered mostly CON domains with other hosts and registrars.
They (dot.ph), hands down, are the slowest I have experienced. In all respects -
(1) The dot.ph is slooowwwww. Yes, everything-about-it slow.
(2) The reply to query is sloooowwwww, which is a token actually because it’s, in truth, non-existent.
If they (dot.ph) can’t fix their own websites (try visiting them all to see real meaning of slooowww), I can’t and will in fact not wait to see their webshosting performance.
Utterly disappointing.
Anyone experienced the speed at which they issue refunds? Slooowwww, perhaps? If they (Dot.ph) wants to charge a lot, which in fact they do, why can’t they show some performance?
Anyhow, I have seen people go around his “ph” problem by attaching something before and after their “ph” “-ph” before or after their domains. So for example, if your preferred domain name is “dotphsuckslow,” instead of “dotphsuckslow.ph”, people opt for either:
(1) “dotphsuckslow-ph.com”
(2) “dotphsuckslowsph.com”
(3) “phdotphsuckslow.com”
It does not look pretty above because dotph sucks, but imagine this:
(1) “love-ph.com”
(2) “loveph.com”
(3) “phlove.com”
Even lovelier than love.com.ph or love.ph, isn’t it. And way cheaper. And way faster – I’d give the first person a free Manchester United jersey if he/she can find in the next 12 hours a website in the same line of business slower than dot.ph. And its a dot.com – its like the (02) in Metro Manila landlines which means all the positive brands recalls you can have except the fact that pldt at the height of its monopoly why slooooww like dot.ph sloooowww.
This is aging tech-kuno company, stagnant and stinky, with no noteworthy innovation it seems whatsoever in the last ____ years. How many people believed believed their i.ph project? What was that? Look at their website. Even their CEO’s blog seems designed from crap.
I believe people should do this than pay well for a lousy service. What are dot.ph servers like, circa and pre-1999? And where exactly are they?
Goodness, what shameless tech providers.
We are selling dotPH domains at P1,100 or P400 cheaper than dotPH and we are dotPH accredited registrar.
Just check this out at http://www.tahanan.net
Web.com.ph is also selling dotPH at P1,100. Here is the link http://www.web.com.ph/domain.php. Could this be start of a price war and bring down the price further just like what happened to the .com price wars?
Competition definitely benefits the consumers. How I wish this was the same for our telcos.
As we have announced last February 2011 in our website, we can bring down the price of dotPH domain to less than P1,000 a year and we will do that very soon! By now, transfer of dotPH domain to us is P950 only with additional year to the domain regardless of how many years it has been registered. For more details see this link: http://tahanan.net/clients/announcements.php?id=39
Visit our client area at: http://tahanan.net/clients
Price of dotPH domain has finally become affordable!!!!!
Twitter: twinklepuff
says:
@Warrior thanks for the info
Again, to make the dotPH domains more accessible to Pinoys, the price of dotPH domain went down to Php995.00/yr. only!!!!
dotPH Domain transfer is now P900. This is the lowest price ever!!!
Check this out in our website: http://www.tahanan.net/clients
We would like to thank your continuous support which made this possible.
Tahanan.net is a fake. He just want’s you to go to their website. All domain queries you do will return unavailable.
Don’t fell for the trap. They can’t even use a .ph domain.
Hi,
There was a problem in the WHOIS in our website because dotPH changed their link when they launched their new website. the issue has been addresssed and many people are registering dotPH domains with us because we are offering the cheapest ever.
What we need is another chinese business man who believes that lower prices creates and drives the market. Convincing a non-Chinese Filipino business man to lower the price of his product is like convincing a chain smoker to stop smoking.
Hi,
Our company is selling PH Domain Registrations at $25 or PHP1075 per domain. We are setting up new website but for now you may contact PHDOMAINS@ENTHROPIA.COM for information on how to get your PH domains from us.