The reason is because it's a very difficult and competitive market and the step up from good to excellent customer service isn't worth the extra cost. You can

The reason is because it's a very difficult and competitive market and the step up from good to excellent customer service isn't worth the extra cost. You can go for low-cost, high-volume (GoDaddy and most others) or high-end, higher cost, lower volume (Network Solutions and a few more). Because the end user experience of getting a domain - as you point out - is pretty much of buying and then only very occasionally making changes, there is no real middle market. Every registry charges a wholesale price and you can charge only a tiny margin before you are priced out the market. The reason that good registrars get worse, ironically, is because they become successful. Once you start dealing with larger and larger volumes, it gets harder to maintain your customer service and price. And the one thing that you don't hear about - but registrars will tell you privately - is that as soon as you get broader public awareness you end up with really difficult customers who chew up alot of time, are usually wrong, or have a complete misunderstanding of how it works, and make life difficult for your customer service teams. It's the curse of being popular in a commodity market. In that sense, GoDaddy does a good job balancing price with level of customer service given the huge numbers of interactions it has to deal with. Personally, I have my domains split over a number of different companies: GoDaddy (US), Heart Internet (UK), Network Solutions (US) and Blacknight (Ireland). If anything I'd give Heart Internet the edge.