Back when Domain Tools increased their prices in April of 2016, a friend texted me, “at least dailychanges is still free.” I texted back, “give it time”
Well now it seems that June 1 you will have to have a personal membership at Domain Tools ($99 monthly, $995 yearly) to access Daily Changes.
There is currently a little banner that popped up a few days ago that alerted users to this change.
When you are in a small, niched industry, information gets expensive as the providers don’t have a broad audience to consume their product.
Roger says
May 11, 2017 at 5:31 pmDoesn’t Ammar Kubba own domain tools, he is no friend to domainers, doesn’t even give them a proper package to purchase
Jeff says
May 11, 2017 at 6:29 pmThe people over at Domain Tools and Tim Chen are scum bags.
Joseph Peterson says
May 12, 2017 at 12:42 am“Scum bags” seems unnecessarily harsh. Yes, domainers are a casualty of this pricing change; and that’s going to be frustrating to any domainer who uses the free tool.
But offering free services is never sustainable. People have to work to build and maintain those services. And if DomainTools has shifted its attention away from domainers toward a different target audience, then it may no longer be justifiable to offer a free service as a loss leader. I mean, if customers who use the free service are not expected to upgrade or pay for anything else, then those customers would simply cost the company money.
Arguably, there is some benefit to keeping domainer customers happy. But it’s understandable why this change would happen, simply as a result of responsibly managing bills and choosing to focus on a separate core audience.
Frustrating? Yes. But let’s reserve the word “scum bags” for people who do worse things than charge for services or raise prices.
AJ says
May 12, 2017 at 5:38 amDon’t like the change but fully agree with you Joseph. Very well stated
Jeff says
May 12, 2017 at 9:44 amPeople who relied on small business to grow and then S&(# on them and only care about huge corporations are scum bags. I’m fine with them not giving away the daily changes info for free but what they did with the domain tools pricing was horrible. I’ve NEVEr had a business raise prices / cut resources like they have and they knew exactly that it was harming small businesses.
Joseph Peterson says
May 13, 2017 at 3:48 amAgree with you, Jeff, that the price hike on DomainTools last year was pretty bad. In that case, they were kicking loyal paying customers to the curb. This time, they’re just beginning to charge for a service that had been free. Which is understandable.
That earlier price increase was really severe and really sudden. And it greatly diminished transparency for the domain market, since fewer people now have access to historical information on domain ownership.