Nominet announced yesterday that they would be increasing the wholesale price of *.uk domain names from March of next year.
At the moment the following pricing applies:
1 year registration £3.50
Multi-year registration £2.50 / year
From March 2016 the cost per year will be a flat £3.75 / year.
The registry’s rationale for the price increase is that they haven’t increased pricing since 1999, while they have continued to invest in their infrastructure, customer service and more.
Over the past couple of years Nominet has become more commercially focussed and has been investing heavily in promotions and marketing with registrars. This is also being cited as one of the reasons for the price increase.
However not everyone is overly happy with the price increase announcement. Kieren McCarthy has written quite a scathing article on the subject for The Register, while Wired’s coverage does not go into as much detail, it also highlights that some of Nominet’s members aren’t too happy.
Some Nominet members have setup a petition about the price change, though so far have gathered less than 100 signatures.
