We have an unfortunate change to announce that affects our customers that are registering domain names through us (where we in turn use the OpenSRS reseller service): there will be a price increase for whois (contact) privacy effective January 2, 2014.
We do want to make it clear that Rollernet is not increasing any pricing on our side, this is a passthrough price increase. The following notice was sent to us from OpenSRS:
Beginning January 2nd, 2014, adding a Contact Privacy subscription to a domain registration will incur a $3.00/year charge. This change to a paid subscription model for Contact Privacy reflects the significant increases in effort, work and costs to operate the service.
According to an FAQ they note “WHOIS proxy services retail in the $5 to $10 range”. We take the total cost of a registration and add 10% to get the final price we charge, which for us works out to be $3.30.
Domains that already have whois/contact privacy enabled since their last renewal will not be affected. However, if privacy is enabled at the time of the next renewal, the renewal fee per year will unfortunately be higher due to this additional charge. Furthermore, enabling contact privacy at any time during a domain’s term (if it was not enabled at renewal time) will also incur this charge, which is not prorated. All charges for contact privacy are non-refundable.