5 ms·
How are they making money with that? What’s the catch?
by xuki 5y ago
How are they making money with that? What’s the catch?
- commoner 5y agoPorkbun sells .com, .net, and .org domains at cost, but adds small markups for other TLDs to earn their profit. > We currently, and historically, have sold .com, .net, .org domains at cost. That means at the cost we pay the registry + fees we need to cover, such as regulatory taxes and card processing fees, without any profit for ourselves. > When we mark up other, standard domains, typically the most we do so is $1 + those fees. We often do less than $1. https://blog.porkbun.com/2021/06/23/how-much-does-a-domain-name-really-cost/ https://blog.porkbun.com/2021/06/23/how-much-does-a-domain-n...
- xuki 5y agoCloudFlare also claim to sell .com at cost, their price is $8.57 per year. Porkbun's price is $9.03 per year (ignore first year promotion).
- commoner 5y agoThey must have different definitions for "at cost". Cloudflare charges the wholesale registry cost plus the ICANN fee. According to their blog post, Porkbun charges a price that would allow them to break even, which also includes regulatory taxes and payment processing fees. Since Cloudflare doesn't factor in these additional taxes and fees, they're losing a little bit of money for each domain they sell. I guess Cloudflare considers this a marketing expense to promote their CDN and other paid services. Cloudflare is the least expensive registar, but they don't handle new domain registrations (only transfers and renewals), and they offer fewer TLDs than Porkbun. A combination of Cloudflare and Porkbun is the most cost-effective way to register domains in the long run, unless you're willing to deal with registrars that steeply discount only the first year.