[cubesnooper]

This is why I always purchase my domains for ten years up front, and top it up to ten again each year after.

This way if the renewal fee increases beyond what I’m willing to pay after I’ve already got infrastructure running on the domain, I have a whole decade to migrate to a better (cheaper) name.

$120 is a larger investment than $12 which means I buy fewer domains overall, but the stability benefits are worth it for me.

[ryan29]

I do the same for anything I consider important, but max out at 9 years. If you want to transfer to another registrar you need to be able to add 1 year. That means transferring a domain that has over 9 years remaining can fail because of the 10 year max. If you get in a dispute with your current registrar you'll want to be able to transfer to another one without waiting to get under the 9 year mark.

[cubesnooper]

That’s a great tip!

[Brajeshwar]

This is a really good idea. Never thought of it via the cost high now so think well before buying angle. I own more 100+ domains and every year, I had to let go because they no longer sound cool.

I didn't realize registrars let you buy for 10 years. The best I have seen are discounted pricing for 2-years.

[cmeacham98]

A lot of registrars will let you "renew" at any time, even months/years before the expiration date (and "renewing" a domain basically just means adding a year).

[cauthon]

> I didn't realize registrars let you buy for 10 years. The best I have seen are discounted pricing for 2-years.

I only have experience with Namecheap. They typically only offer discounted pricing for the first year, but you can pre-purchase renewals at the full price for several years (maybe up to 10, haven’t looked recently)

[eyelidlessness]

Even for bargain prices I’m glad I don’t own 100 domains! That’s probably more than I spend on delivery fees for tangible goods in a year.

[Brajeshwar]

LOL! Early on I had some unexpected luck selling some of my domains for low-ish thousand of dollars. That encouraged me to kinda just buy domains when I have an idea or stumble on a thing that I believe I might do some day or let someone do some day.

For example, I sold hackathon.co for good money (I even gave them the GSuite at that time). I also sold html5.in to Microsoft sub $10,000 (via a broker, unfortunately, which I realized way later) still for a pretty good sum. I have also sold quite a few more for low $100s.

And I donated thus.org to a Texas university for zero dollar and gave them the GSuite too. I'm happy that an educational institute is using it and the domain is alive.

I own nsfw.in, which was "a link shortener to warn you that it might not be Safe before opening". I got lazy and is on sale and I keep getting regular emails/contacts to buy it.

[indigodaddy]

Very cool, you sound like a resourceful person!

[FpUser]

>"This is why I always purchase my domains for ten years up front, and top it up to ten again each year after."

I do exactly the same. I also always stick to com. I leave "coolness" factor to other parts of the domain.

[habibur]

I find only ".com" names cool.

All other are cheap, junk or designed to extort.

[arminiusreturns]

I really like my .net names, but since the recent drama... I think I just hate dns in general.

[ezequiel-garzon]

What recent drama, if you don’t mind?

[arminiusreturns]

ICANN control moving to a different body, but I was thinking of the .org stuff a few years ago... but after looking it up it seems ICANN actually did the right thing on that one so... I'm not sure what I was referencing.

[handsclean]

I think the coolest TLDs are .edu, .org, .gov, and .com, in that order, because that’s ordered by likelihood the content (not design) will be good, knowing nothing else about the website.

[vel0city]

The coolest TLD is .ninja 'cause ninjas are cool.

Or maybe .ice, 'cause that's cool as ice.

[pjot]

The coolest is absolutely .cool

[toast0]

Saying that you're cool isn't cool.

[lupire]

and .net

[layer8]

Nah, .net and .org are the coolest.

[daemoens]

name.info/.dev and the like are pretty cool for personal pages though. People always design them really well because it's about them personally.

[xwdv]

This same reason is why they are perfect for extortion. It’s personal so you will be emotionally motivated to fork over $850 on renewal. Plus if you’re a developer, you make good money, so they know you’re good for it.

[danaris]

> Plus if you’re a developer, you make good money

...which is absolutely a stereotype born of the Silicon Valley bubble, and not actually true in practice.

The vast majority of developers do not work in Silicon Valley, nor for FAANGs (or whatever the abbreviation is nowadays), and do not make several hundred thousand a year or have highly valuable tech stock options.

[xwdv]

So you’re a developer making bad money?

[phendrenad2]

Supposedly they do it to discourage domain squatters, which makes some sense, because every .com or .net that's even remotely usable is held by some squatter and they would rather hold the domain for decades than sell it for anything less than thousands.

[dym_sh]

that's cute, not like they cant hit you with extra "unforeseen" charge and hold domain for ransom until you pay up, or just drop you as a customer based on some arbitrary reason, refunding full 10 years and putting domain for an auction

you have just as much real control over domain as you have over entire DNS — zilch and a half — it all holds on trust and good faith, until greed comes into play

[Brajeshwar]

Is this for real and you are not kidding? Can you please share examples/incidents?

[dym_sh]

namecheap dropped entire population of russia and belorussia as customers

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/1/22956581/russia-ukraine-na...

sure, an extraordinary example, but what stops anyone from wording their ToS ever so slightly vague, that any domain is held by a shoestring

[ameliaquining]

They weren't holding the domains hostage, though, right? You can find any other registrar willing to have you and transfer your domain from Namecheap to them (and I think Namecheap would get in trouble with ICANN if this weren't the case). So customers are mostly just inconvenienced a little.

[simfree]

So long as you provide ample time to transition and sound reasoning, firing customers you can't effectively service is the best thing to do.