WebCentral slashes domain name pricing model

Australian web and application hosting company, WebCentral has reduced its domain name pricing in response to a rapidly commoditising market.

The company has reduced its retail '.com.au' and '.net.au' domain name pricing by 52 percent, from $135 to $65 for two years, and '.com' domain names by 24 percent, from $33 to $25 per year. This offer is in conjunction with the launch of its latest web hosting range for SMEs.

WebCentral is also offering a free .com.au or .net.au domain name to the first 500 new customers that sign up for shared hosting to encourage more small and medium businesses to take advantage of the web as a marketing channel to their customers.

CEO Andrew Spicer said the company had dropped its prices to reflect the global trend in downward pressure on domain name pricing.

"There’s a lot of competition amongst companies that offer domain name registration so we are taking the only step we can to reflect this trend,” he said.

With the commoditisation of domain names businesses were developing innovative techniques, such as registering multiple domains, registering product names as domains and by running campaign micro sites, to increase traffic to their web sites, Spicer said.

But these cheap services were not always of benefit to small businesses, he said.

"Although some of these web hosting companies offer ridiculously low prices they do it without providing a quality service," Spicer said.

"Some [SMBs]are very small and buy a service which is specifically designed for the consumer market so these businesses end up paying for it by not getting the services they need."

lilia guantelco/ispwebcentral