Microsoft will still buy the domain; same way that they’ll pay if the price was just $10PHP 587INR 847EUR 10CNY 73. 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 $25PHP 1,467INR 2,119EUR 24CNY 182/year and sell them at $30PHP 1,761INR 2,542EUR 29CNY 218 per year. It’s still lower than $70PHP 4,108INR 5,932EUR 67CNY 509/2 years to entice customers to buy from the resellers and not directly from dotPH.
Lastly, and this one’s my theory, self-preservation. Look at Microsoft — it was able to maintain its dominance and success because it had something people needed and only Microsoft can provide. Has FOSS able to shift the market demand and pressured M$ 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).
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AhmedF says:
I just wanted to say that I think the comparison to .nz .be .jp is invalid – just do (cost of country domain) / (average person income for that country). I am sure the %age for new zealand, belgium, japan, etc will be *far* lower than the Philippines.
Paulo says:
Just recently I tried transferring a .PH domain for an old client to a new owner, so I checked the instructions for doing so, assuming that the Domain Manager would make the transfer easy.
http://www.domains.ph/MGChangeOwner.asp
Nope. It’s the same process as it was SIX YEARS AGO. You have to fill out a paper form, get it notarized, and FAX OR MAIL it to them. If I’m paying $35/year (in minimum two year installments no less) is it too much to expect technological solutions from later than the last century?
Noemi says:
why not factor per capita income? But I think the pricing has to do with economies of scale. The demand isn’t that high yet.
noel says:
@ahmed and @noemi
Exactly. People from other countries have bigger salaries which can afford a higher cost of domain registration.
I’ve made a post in my blog regarding this issue and what I think about it.
I also did some research on the procedure for redeligation and what we can do about it. It’s a very lenghty post but it sure is worth reading .
dotPH issue
Abe Olandres says:
But the United States domains aren’t expensive — .US is around $9. If we base it on per capita, they should be charging $50 and higher.
The question remains — will people ask for a redelegation IF the prices were cut down? What if there was a redelegation but the prices remained the same — will everyone still be satisfied?
elmer says:
Why? because of monopoly!Remember when the days of network solutions they do charge as high as $75/year for domain registration but when godaddy comes into the picture everything becomes price competetive. And the reason why godaddy fees are so insanely low as $1.99 (w/promo) is because they want you to register a domain and then they will offer you tons of services during check out process (which is btw very effective) and that’s where they make money.
So what daddy’s telling us here is you can sell cheap domain names but you also have to offer value added services because that’s where the money is.
Joseph says:
How much do other countries charge for their own ccTLD? In the US, Godaddy is 7.99 (P 398.86), Singapore is S $39 (P 1, 237), Denamark’s Hostmaster is DK 45 (P 138.51), Iceland is IK 12, 450 (P 9, 101.79) Finland is 52 (P 3260.76) and Canada is 34.99 (P 1, 549.44). Those countries were chosen not at random, rather through their rank in the Network Readiness Index 2005. By saying that, at least we do not charge the highest, means that we should be thankful about it. It as if we should feel a sigh of relief knowing that other domains cost more.
You cannot compare domain names with web hosting. Why is local hosting expensive? Because there’s competition and as you have said, US hosting plans are cheaper. But you cannot say the same thing with domain names because each country is unique. Can I buy a PH domain from Dreamhost?
There may be no assurance that “all” SMEs and individuals will buy a PH domain but who knows? (Of course I know that uncertainty and risk is bad for business. Those that are not trying hard anyway).
Hmm, yes FOSS may not have been able to pressure MS to lower their licensing fees, but the former gave the option of not having MS at all.
Abe Olandres says:
@ Joseph : the general idea here was competition lowers the prices and not the other way around. By the fact that the local hosting industry is still expensive and cannot compete with the west tells us something about the market they service. If DreamHost wants, they CAN sell PH domains as resellers which they can get at $15 and sell at $16.50 or $17. But will they sell it at that price? Guess not.
AsiaRegistry.com sells PH domains at $99 per year. Marcaria.com sells PH domains at $65/year. Why such a huge markup?
@ elmer
The CNO (.com, .net and .org) namespace is different from the ccTLD (i.e. PH) namespace by the mere fact that their volumes are way apart.
.com has 58 million active domains
.net has 8.4 million active domains
.org has 5.3 million active doamins
.PH is a mere 150k active (guesstimate)
In reference, GoDaddy has 3.5 million domains currently active. Had there been 3.5 million active PH domains, I’m sure its easy to convince Joel Disini to peg the price to $10. His managers told me so, but you can’t quote me on that! *hehe*
I read somewhere that that in order for a Domain Registrar to break even, it has to be able to sell 100k CNO domains. And that’s just breaking even with the capitalization at current market prices which is ~$10.
So, why don’t we apply that little info with the PH namespace? That means $1 million a year to break even.
Say, dotPH has 150k domains active at $35/year ($70/2 years). That’s $5.25 million year.
What if we lower the price to $10 as well? That gives them just $1.5 million revenue per year, a 71% drop in annual revenue.
What if by lowering the prices, they were able to double the sales (supply & demand) — that’s $3 million (300k x $10) — still a drop of 43% in annual revenue.
If these figures are close to reality, then we can say that dotPH will still be profitable even at $10. But who in their right mind would want to settle for lower revenues?
But and this is a big BUT, what if we break the monopoly? Say 3 Registrars, each with 50k domains in their helm. They compete in the market forcing the domains to go down to CNO levels of $8 to $9. That’s $9 x 50k or $450,000 — not enough to break even and the company goes bankrupt.
What’s the best case scenario? We get 3 competing Registrars lowering prices and with the power of supply and demand jacks up registration of PH domains doubling its volume. We get 3 Registrars each with 100k domains each. They’re just break even and that’s not good for the company/business. A very huge risk and who would want to enter that business if that’s the forecast?
Again, in parallel to this, just look at the Telecoms industry. We have Globe, Smart and Sun Cellular. We have unlimited text messaging before, then it was cut off to 1 SMS per Php1.00 load, then it was reduced to 1 SMS per Php3.00 load — all in the name of free market and competition. So, breaking the monopoly doesn’t also guarantee cheaper price.
AhmedF says:
Canada is not $35 – it is 10 canadian dollars. Thats like saying that .coms are $35 because that is what NS charges.
Someone does, but there *are* cheaper options.
And the capita comparison was only put in there because it can set a ceiling, but not a floor :)
On the other hand – how much DOES dotPH make? If they were slash prices by 50%, how do we know they would go out of buisness? How many of their employees are for the core functions (DNS and registration) and how many are for other projects (eg i.ph). So many questions, not a single answer.
Eugene says:
Who says that dotPH have to match CNO prices? I think even $15 is reasonable for 1 year. But $35 is just way too expensive. I really want a .ph domain name but the pricing is too prohibitive.
Miguel says:
AhmedF, that is one of the core issues behind the dotPH delegation – transparency.
Dave Starr says:
Pretty interesting discussion on a very intertesting question. From the outside looking in as far as the Philippines goes, when I first put up a web site, .com domains from US resellers were running about $35 per year … yes, Virgina they used to cost that much. There were so far as I can find out no .ph domains available to the public.
Good or bad, to the outside world at least, the Disinis put the Philippines on the Internet. It’s quite easy to cry ‘monopoly’ and ‘excess profits’ today, but where is anyone ready to attempt to compete?
My second thought is, of what use is a country code domain anyway? As someone already pointed out .us domains are cheap … and why are they cheap? Who wants them? I wouldn’t use a .US for a business if you paid me to.
Can anyone even name a viable .US business? I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
And for something personal? Nope, no point … even for a hobby why would I make it hard for folks to find me?
Why would a .ph be better than a .com? if .ph’s were suddenly as cheap or cheaper than .com
s, how many Philippine businesses would switch? A lot fewer than many would imagine is my guess.
elmer says:
@16
“the Disinis put the Philippines on the Internet”
im not really clear about this, i believe even without the .ph there are already .com .net Filipino website.
“Can anyone even name a viable .US business? I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”
http://del.icio.us i believe is a good example but im not really sure if they’re making money with there business model.
“And for something personal? Nope, no point … even for a hobby why would I make it hard for folks to find me?”
For personal use I would jump in if only they reduce the amount let say $10-12/year but with $35? that’s 3 years worth compare to my daddy’s registrar.
Also my take on this is .com .us .ph won’t be a big deal later on considering the advancements of search engines, people/customers would come to you if you have relevant or interesting contents/products shows up in the search results.
Dave Starr says:
@ Elmer,
Good points. My on the map phrase was ill chosen, I should have said put .ph on the map … that was the subject of the conversation after all, but I regret my lack of precision. I wasn’t talking about who owned web sites I was talking about their TLD and where they could obtain one.
Yes, delici whatever makes a “cute” use of the .US domain. However, as you can see, it’s cute, not to try to identify the web site as US … just like the television-related sites around the world that are .TV. In deli whatever’s case, indeed, I don’t know what their business model is, I don’t use them simply because of the stupid ‘cuteness’ and the non-standard domain. They remain the isolated example that basically proves the rule.
A large travel and shipping company whom I use often is Filipino-American owned with significant employees/investments in both the Philippines and the US. They call themselves travelph.com not travel.ph or travel.us … the principals of the company certainly have the Pesos/Dollars not to worry about the .ph registration fees, but nobody (on a world-wide basis) goes to _most_ .ph or .us or.ca or .za, etc.sites for business … they go to .com’s to spend their money … and money drives business not cuteness or nationalism.
One of my business partners is Canadian based. They started with a .ca site and a mirror site with a .com TLD. They tell me the old .ca domain redirects only 20 or 30 visitors a week to the main .com site. The issue isn’t if they’re Canadian or some other nationality, their issue is people type in the trade name and hit return and “bang” they are on the .com site … no one, even Canadians think of looking for “tradename.ca”
Anyway, good discussion/thoughts coming out on this one.
AhmedF says:
The argument that .com is superior to a ccTLD is slowly weakening, and will only continue to do so.
Beyond the fact that originally the .com was the first established domain, many of the ccTLDs were very restrictive. It was complicated and expensive for anyone to establish such a domain. Eg Canada – before the reform and CIRA, you had to file some paperwork with a university. Not only that, but you had to have a trademark on that exact term. The only way for me to buy ‘travel.ca’ was to have a trademark on ‘travel.ca’ Instead of bothering with that hassle, most people just opted for the .com. This was of course before we considered all the paperwork of getting the domain. At the same time, cost was a factor still. Why would I pay $100+ for a .ca domain when I could pay just $10-15 and snag a .com?
The one exception to this was Germany, who were very open with the .de. And what happened there? .DE is *FAR* more popular than .COM in Germany. In fact, after .com registrations, the most popular extension is .DE
But as companies have started to localize the internet, and as ccTLD prices have fallen (eg .ca are now $10 and while still a hassle, no where near as it was before), the adoption rate for ccTLDs is only going up. The two best indicators:
– Multinational promotions. While companies like Toyota and Hotels.com used to push their .com, in Canada they now push .ca. Hotels.ca especially runs non-stop on radio. It is of their interest to establish the .ca (or whatever .ccTLD) as it helps hone in on a single audience. Insetad of having to think – “Hrmm … is this visitor to toyota.com from the US or the UK or Russia or Japan” they simply know with the ccTLD
– General trends/education. As people become more and more educated about the internet, more and more poeple are using their specific ccTLDs. This is verified by lots of data.
Lastly, in regards to tradename.ca – I actually know the person who owns domains like travel.ca, sex.ca, realestate.ca, etc etc. If you visit the site, it is nothing but ads. But they not only get traffic, the traffic they are getting is increasing every month. Concrete proof that ccTLD acceptance is increasing :)
Hell, I’m sure one of the larger .com.ph holders reads this blog (but maybe not my comments) – ask him for verification :)
Jazzy says:
I have to admit that Im one of those people frustrated with the pricing of cctld, and on this post i would like to emphasis on “it’s a business” alibi.
There’s indeed no guarantee that a flock of filipinos will go shopping spree and take cctld if the price will be reduced. It’s a weakling alibi. As i understand, a “business”, is run by a system. You can’t just lower the price and hoping for the business to pick up solely on that strategy. There’s marketing, support, sales efforts and gazillion ways to improve the bottom line. This no rocket science. Godaddy didn’t just lower the price, they extended their services too.
I think the dotph business owner is just too lazy. The laziness to the expense of majority.
Case Study: Telecommunications in the Philippines.
Still remember that it will cost you P15k-25K for a single PLDT line? I’m pretty sure that we wouldnt be a text capital of the world if there’s only a single telco provider.
joel disini says:
Hi,
I just recently discovered this thread, and I thought I’d directly respond to the group. Hopefully, people are still willing to discuss this topic.
My understanding is that most of the readers here are Adsense/SEO people? If so, I’ll try to address my thoughts appropriately.
First of all, DotPH pricing at $35/year is the retail price. The wholesale price is a lot cheaper, and goes as low as $15/year, depending on your volume of registrations. This has been the case as far back as 2000, when very few ccTLDs were selling below the $35 level. The Registrar prices are located here:
http://www.domains.ph/PartnerApply.asp
As you can see, the discounts begin once you have at least 12 domains to register.
So it might make sense for some of you to join forces, and buy in bulk – so you can enjoy larger discounts – or work with one of our existing Registrars. We have over 150 Registrars – practically every ISP in the Philippines and Webhosting company is a Registrar. (Now whether they wish to pass on the discounts to you – that is entirely another matter).
If your need is to get lots of domains so that you can point them to your main website (so as to increase its Google rank), then perhaps we can discuss creating some price that favors the SEO community. If some of you recall, we actually gave a way 18+ character domains several years ago – for free. This way you can get domains with your desired keywords, then direct people to your main money site. Or you can monetize them with SEDO, DomainSponsor, or some similar domain monetizing company. We’ve also toyed with the option of lowering price for net.ph & org.ph – but we’d like to get more feedback first.
But if you are domainers and want to buy domains, hold, and sell them later, you might want to look at mail-only domains. These only cost $5/year and can be later updated to full functionality (once you pay $35/year). So this means you can speculate (if you wish) and grab all the domains that you think will be of value in the future. They you can sell them later at a profit.
I am currently at the ICANN conference in Portugal, and Tim Schumacher of SEDO tells me that the average resale price these days for domains is about 20k. That’s a pretty impressive amount. Naturally, ccTLD domains don’t sell that high – but once more and more Philippine businesses get online, you should find the aftermarket price for PH domains going up.
If you have ideas, please feel free to post comments on my blog at jed.i.ph (it is unmoderated). Or if you prefer, you can call/email us directly. (The contact details are here:
http://www.domains.ph/ContactUs.asp
.
This way, we can respond more quickly to your concerns.
Andre says:
Just a note, we will sell you a .com.ph cheap (~$25) if you want to register through enthropia, just go to enthropia.domains.ph and choose check payment then email me at a****@****.*** to organize payment. We have no system in place for this as we arent really offering this fulltime yet, but since we’re willing to take no profit to promote the use of .com.ph . Also if you have a blog and want to move it to a .com.ph we can even sponsor the domain and your hosting for free.
Jerome says:
I do not get the comparison of MS and FOSS at all. MS is a single corporate entity while FOSS is a global movement, part technical/part social. MS may not have changed its pricing scheme towards their software but FOSS did pressure them to change their business strategy.
As a software company, MS has every right to move to a FOSS model if it wants to, anytime, rather than their existing proprietary one. The comparison is quite vague.
IrcMafia says:
Let’s just hope .ph domain names will lower there pricing scheme..And lets hope also that http://www.dot.ph will be always online to serve us :) ( sana walang pinoy na ddoser at baka iddos ung dot.ph na domain. hahaahahahahahaha).
DOES Anyone knew any website where I can register .ph domain in a cheaper price and only for 1yr period?.. I am an IRC geek and i wanna use it as VHOST. Thanks
Dot NOT says:
.PH has nothing to do with the Philippines it stand for PHONE and not the Philippines.
Disini with all his banking experience ( failed or otherwise) should know that 10,000,000 domains at US$ 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.
Robert P. says:
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.
Carlos says:
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
Warrior says:
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.
Carlos says:
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!!!!!
Nadine says:
@Warrior thanks for the info :)
Tahanan says:
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.
paoloumali says:
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.
TAHANAN says:
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.
Natz says:
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.
PH Domains says:
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 PHDOM****@****.*** for information on how to get your PH domains from us.
Trisha Sebastian says:
Hi Everyone! Could anyone recommend to me a reliable web hosting company in Manila with servers that are actually here and i.p. addresses registered here in Philippines?
J.Michael says:
.PH is expensive simply because it’s monopolized by Joel Disini. That’s simply ridiculous. No one person should be responsible for the control of the PH domain. It should be managed by a group or organization that has no conflict of interest.
http://www.ph.net/phildac/whitepaper.html
“…Since 1990, the PH domain has been administered and controlled by a single private individual, Joel Disini, and the company he controls, DotPH Inc…”
Jose Roco says:
As always, Pinoys love a monopoly. High prices by the Disini’s and bad and slow service. Definitely Philippine style.
It should be priced at $5 with the way people are making money here in Philippines. Good luck to the Philippines!!
Jose Roco says:
It is funny. Herminio Disini, father or Joel Disini, who stole $10 Billion US dollars with the Marcoses from the Philippines controls the PH domain. Like father like son!! Grabe talaga.
Poor pinoys. You will always be owned by the corrupt and super rich!! I will never buy a .ph domain. :(
Emil Avancena says:
dotPH is having a promotion for $10 domain registrations. Check Jan. 14 edition of Philippine Daily Inquirer for details.
Matt says:
I hope one of these days .PH will be a bit cheaper than it is now.
Dorothio says:
About your first reason. Don’t just compare it to other domains. They don’t own your business. They don’t own your market.
Second. How come you can question the assurance of your sales when you don’t create value in the first place? Supply and demand will come later. that should be results of your action to lower the price.
Third. No way. Almost all young entreprenuers here are locked-up while they want to brand their own business because the prices are higher than hosting. And you just summarize that all Filipino entreps are idiots! We do startups! that’s for real!
Fourth. Protecting your business? Why not protect your customers first?
that’s totally B.S.
Lastly, I don’t get it. Why would you compare your service/product to Microsoft? Are you doing business like Microsoft? Don’t talk B.S. about dominance. We already had dominance in the Malacañang Palace and they say this B.S. concerns too.
Don’t get me wrong too. If you are honest to your customers. Make a change. CREATE VALUE! instead of scammy B.S. Filipino you have been.
Tino says:
So why in Poland, the .PL domain is for free at the first year of subscription? Still possible to lower the cost down to 0, isn’t it? I don’t get the excuses.