I recently asked them why they charge more than competitors for, this was the response:
Thank you for contacting Gandi Customer Care. It is true, Gandi does charge slightly more for
domains than some other registrars. We do feel that we are still affordable, however. The
reason we need to charge a small premium is that we have a different business model than
other, larger companies, and cannot get by on razor-thin margins. We are a commercial
organization, certainly, and we do make money, but we also support the community of
innovators in the hosting and domain name management space, and we do not advertise, but
rely on word of mouth for our marketing. We do not buy market share with ads, and we do
not make empty promises to capture customers.
We also include some services (such as a free year of SSL certificates and the ability to
obfuscate your whois data) that other registrars tend to charge incrementally for. This is
because we believe that your data is yours. We will never sell your private information as
some others do, and so we do not have that revenue stream.
We appreciate your willingness to consider Gandi as an ethical, no-bullshit alternative to
GoDaddy. Right now a lot of domains are available at $8/yr through the end of 2011. We
hope you will join us.
If they don't advertise, shouldn't their costs be lower? Also, I'd rather they charge incrementally for services. Charging more for forced bundling of unwanted services only benefits them.
I don't know about transfers but new domains get one year free one domain SSL certificates too. I have most of my domains with Gandi and their management website is a breeze.
I don't like mentality like you represent in this post, not everyone who buys domains is a funded tech company or anything like that. In the end if a company is offering the same service at a lower price why would you not go with that one? What makes you think Gandi.net is worth more than Namecheap? They seem to offer the same service and ethics as Gandi. And the difference is a take out meal where I live, I'll take the sandwich and domain if you give me the choice.
I don't like the mentality you represent in this post, not everyone who buys domains has the time to haggle over $5. The time saved not worrying about $5 could be used to get a take out meal where I live. ;)
Why would I pay $15 when I can pay $10 and get great service?
Does Gandi offer something that others don't?
As for the amount, I'll admit that it isn't a great deal, but while $5 won't break me, it's a matter of scale. I've been transitioning from GoDaddy for awhile now, but at the moment, I still have about 20 domains hosted with them.
20 x $5 is $100, which means I can be free of GoDaddy for $x with Name.com, for $x + 100 with Gandi. Again, why would I pay more when there are known good options for less?
I recently asked them why they charge more than competitors for, this was the response:
Thank you for contacting Gandi Customer Care. It is true, Gandi does charge slightly more for domains than some other registrars. We do feel that we are still affordable, however. The reason we need to charge a small premium is that we have a different business model than other, larger companies, and cannot get by on razor-thin margins. We are a commercial organization, certainly, and we do make money, but we also support the community of innovators in the hosting and domain name management space, and we do not advertise, but rely on word of mouth for our marketing. We do not buy market share with ads, and we do not make empty promises to capture customers. We also include some services (such as a free year of SSL certificates and the ability to obfuscate your whois data) that other registrars tend to charge incrementally for. This is because we believe that your data is yours. We will never sell your private information as some others do, and so we do not have that revenue stream.
We appreciate your willingness to consider Gandi as an ethical, no-bullshit alternative to GoDaddy. Right now a lot of domains are available at $8/yr through the end of 2011. We hope you will join us.