Uniregistry Price Hike Up to 30 Times: can ICANN save the registrants?

The price hike by Uniregistry is a right move executed in a wrong way. With this decision:

• Uniregistry Wins 
• ICANN Loses 
• Old Registrants Lose with no choice 
• New Registrants Lose with a choice 

The steep price increase is likely to make Uniregistry new gtlds more profitable. However, they do not seem to care for their existing registrants which includes me. Businesses use domain for online presence. This domain become a part of their online existence and they cannot afford to lose it. This is where Uniregistry is trying to make money. A bigger problems lies with what would be the future price hikes.

A big problem for existing registrants is illustrated below.

.Hosting tld current and assumed registrations with proposed 15 times price increase:

In the above table you would notice that Uniregistry is making exceptionally good sales even if their number of registration fall by 75% with every price raise.

What about the poor registrants, who developed and promoted their website by using the .hosting and similar new gtld from Uniregistry. Unfortunately, many of the registrants will be forced to abandon their domain as paying that kind of price will be out of question. The money and the efforts that this registrants have spend to brand their domains is all lost. Does Uniregistry care for this?

For a new registrant, they have a choice whether to pay or not for the high price tlds. However, for the existing registrant their business is trapped in this domain and they have no choice but to pay whatever is asked for.

It is understandable for Uniregistry to increase prices as they need to make the tlds profitable, but definitely not by putting the existing customers under the hammer.

A similar price increase took with certain tlds from Donuts. They handled it really well. The price increase was only for the new customers. Old customers remain unaffected. This showed that Donuts registry cared for the business profitability as well as their customers.

Being a fan of new gtld I will stick to new gtld domains, however, I will stay away from registries that charge their existing users exorbitantly and assume that prior notice would be sufficient.

ICANN, as domain registrant we believe that you are their to protect our interest. Kindly intervene this.