Novara News

Novara.ie state that .ie prices must come down.

Rip Off Republic - Are we paying too much for domain registration?

Press Release

Eddie Hobbs series has exposed a number of areas where the Irish public are paying high prices for services. One area missed in the series is the price paid for registrations in the national domain extension, the .ie. Retail prices for the registration of a .ie domain name currently vary according to provider from €120.98 (inc. vat) to €60.31 (inc. vat). In contrast the registration of a .com domain name costs on average between E15 and E20 while the new .eu domain will cost E10.

The Irish Domain Registry has steadily lowered its wholesale price over the last number of years however many registration providers have been slow to pass on the benefit of this reduction.

The total number of .ie domains currently registered ( 50,315 ) compares poorly with the fact that there are 138,215 limited companies and 254,000 Registered Business Names registered at the Irish Companies Registration Office. This highlights the fact that a substantial number of Irish people use the cheaper .com domain extension for their businesses. In term of total domains registered in other country specific extensions there are 44 million .com/.net domains, 4.3 million .co.uk domains and 9 million .de (Germany) domains.

A quick comparison with the Spanish Domain Registry is instructive. The Spanish Government, concerned with poor take up of the .es domain as compared with other European extensions, instituted major change at the .es Registry in late 2003. The Registry’s registration price of E110 (E127.60 inc. tax) was cut to E27.59 (E32 inc. tax). To ensure stability in the Spanish domain registration industry and to introduce volume efficiencies a formal system of Registrar accreditation was also introduced. The strategy has been successful with a considerably increase in the number of .es registrations at the lower price levels.

Eoin Costello, managing director of one of Ireland’s largest domain registrars, Novara.ie stated

“Ireland’s future prosperity is in the high end knowledge based economy and ecommerce is central to that. Our country must maintain its position as a leading ebusiness centre in Europe accordingly we believe that it is in the national interest that:

1. That the average retail price for .ie domain registrations fall by 50% over the coming 18 months.
2. That a target of 100,000 .ie registrations be achieved over the coming 18 months.

Our company will be working hard to help achieve these twin objectives.”