hello:

i am just curious. what other reasons beside better price (new registrar) and bad service (former register) would explain why someone would transfer his domain name from one registrar to another? The reason I ask is because I register a domain name at a registrar whose price is competive, and it allows me to update DNS info. So if i was to move my website to another hosting company, i would just simply log into my register's DNS service and change the A record to the ip of my new hosting server. that's basically all i need.

there seems to be a lot of transfering of domain names. am i missing something? maybe i missed a lot since i am so new to this field.

thank you in advance to anyone who kindly donate a few minutes of your valuable time leading me to the light on this subject.

If you are happy with your current registrar, there is no need to move.

I don't see anyone moving registrars if they are happy. Seems the biggest reasons to move are, like you mentioned, price and service. And, as Warp said, if you're happy, you stay.

when it comes to registering domains, the price simply isn't the best decider. There a combination of factors particularly surrounded by the control panel / interface used to manage your domains.

Yes if you are happy I would go to the bother to transfer over a couple of dollars because it could cost you more in other issues.

I have transferred hundreds of names between registrars, let me share my experience.

When it all started, there was only one registrar which is also the registry -- simply Network Solutions. They had just started to charge US$100 for 2 years out of somebody called it greed. But you have no choice, so there it went ... it took me some US$5,000 to register just 50 domain names!

Then my saviour came. Register.com came along with their US$35 price tag. Network Solutions was forced to reduce theirs to US$70 for 2 years. I transferred many of my inventory over there.

Then came the name boom when I witnessed the total number jumped from 1 to 4 million in less than half a year. And within the next 18 months, we already had more than 10 million domains altogether!

Why do I mentioned this, you might ask. It's apparent that NetSol (which changed its name to Verisign with the opening up of the registrar market) was unable to keep up with the pace. They were good with 1 million, okay with 4; but when it came to 8-12 million, their capacity just didn't cope with the exponential growth any more. Their services soon became unacceptable at best.

Not long after, Register.com followed suit ... I mean with the poor service. But fortunately, we have a lot to choose from now: OpenSRS, then GoDaddy, etc. (Sorry, I seldom use eNom and honestly do not think they are the best.)

How's that?

Hi NameSlave,

I hope you don't mind if I correct a couple of facts (I have been in the reseller/registrar industry (if you can call it that) since 1995.

In Jan of 1993 the National Science Foundation award a competitively bid contract to run the registry for COM, NET, ORG, EDU, and GOV to Network Solutions (NSI). At the start the government paid NSI's costs and it was free to register.

By Sep of 1995 there were over 200,000 domain names registered and typical registration time was over two weeks. Following a renegotiation of the contract it was announced that domain names would cost $100 for two years, $70 of this would go to NSI and $30 would go to a fund to be used by the government for Internet Infrastructure.

In 1998 (I think) the government decided to stop collecting the $30 fee, so the price was reduced to $70 for two years. (Later both the NSF and NSI were sued over this fee with the assertion that it was an illegal tax, congress then retroactively ratified the tax and made it legal).

Conpetition started on June 7th 1999 when Register.com was the first of the five testbed registrars to register a domain through the shared registry system. Since then prices have gradually come down to the current levels.

At the end of the day I agree with most of the posts here: find a registrar who offers you good service and account management tools at a price that is acceptable to you and stick with them.

Regards,

Mark......

Another comment: Netsol didn't change its name to Verisign, Network Solutions was acquired by Verisign on June 9th 2000 for about 21 billion dollors in stock.

I was a Network Solutions employee, the stock hit almost $260 a share when the acquisition was announced and I wish I had sold all my stock options there and then :D

Mark......

I also purchase a lot of domains from third parties and take these over wherever they happen to be registered at the time. I then transfer them so that my total domains are more easily managed.

a lot of transferring happens because some people are impulse buyers, me being one of them, some things just look good at the moment :) then you find a registrar you like, for me it was the interface, DNS control, multible accounts under one name and ease of use, not price, and then you start transferring all of them into one place and in my case I started reselling them through the same registrar

>Mark Mitford, Sales Director, Dotster Inc.
It's really nice to hear from an industry insider. :cool:

>I hope you don't mind if I correct a couple of facts
I enjoy really your more detailed account than my spontaneous rumbling; but frankly, I don't see much discrepancy between them, although the way I wrote it clearly shows that I am biased against NetSol, that's for sure. (Who on earth is NOT?)

Originally posted by MarkMitford
Mark Mitford, Sales Director, Dotster Inc.


Welcome to the forums. It's nice to see some of the "big" companies join us! I enjoyed reading your post..

I think the only reason to transfer from one registrar to another is pretty much price, service, and control panel. (Prioritized in that order.)

thank you so much everyone for your time in helping me with this subject. it's great appreciated.

thank you.

Thanks for the welcome everyone :)

Nameslave: I can understand you being biased against Netsol, like most people (myself included most of the time :) ) The decrepency I was pointing out was just that it was the US Government who were setting the prices pre-competition not Netsol (although I'm sure Netsol weren't complaining about the windfall!)

Mark......