Yesterday, I tried transferring a .LINK domain name to GoDaddy, but I was not able to do that, I got the error message “Unavailable For Transfer“, for no reason.
For one minute startled, I recheck my domain and everything is normal. And I'm sure that error is belongs to Godaddy. Researched on Google, and I found my exact case on domainnamewire, just the difference in the domain name extension that they wanted to transfer. This is the answer from Godaddy to domainnamewire:
Thus, we can understand that the main reason is because Uniregistry is increasing the wholesale prices of its domain names by up to 30x beginning in August 21. And Godaddy does not want their customers to pay too much money (maybe up to $300) when renewing those domains, and like they said: “That’s an extremely poor customer experience and does not reflect well on the domain name industry in general.” GoDaddy will stopped on new registration and transfer but they will continue to support their current customers who have Uniregistry registered domain names.
Below is a list of domain names will be increase prices in August 2017
| Num | Domain | Current price | Price after August 21 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | .DIET | $13.33 | $100 |
| 2 | .AUDIO | $9.33 | $100 |
| 3 | .BLACKFRIDAY | $26.67 | $100 |
| 4 | .HOSTING | $20 | $300 |
| 5 | .CHRISTMAS | $20 | $50 |
| 6 | .CLICK | $4.67 | $7 |
| 7 | .FLOWERS | $17.67 | $100 |
| 8 | .PROPERTY | $20 | $100 |
| 9 | .GUITARS | $20 | $100 |
| 10 | .HIPHOP | $13.33 | $100 |
| 11 | .JUEGOS | $9.33 | $300 |
| 12 | .TATTOO | $20 | $30 |
| 13 | .LINK | $6.67 | $7 |
| 14 | .HELP | $13.33 | $20 |
| 15 | .PICS | $13.33 | $20 |
| 16 | .SEXY | $13.33 | $40 |
Uniregistry has explained this increase because these domain types are new gTLDs, which have special meaning so there're only few buyers. Meanwhile, the minimum cost to maintain for each field is high, so the increase in selling price is necessary to generate profit to offset operating costs.
On the consumer side, this is bad news, especially for those who are planning to develop a website with one of these domains. If you are a rich person, continue to work as usual, otherwise you should move on to another domain name extensions because the renewal cost after it's expiration is very high. My advice to anyone who owns one of these domains is let renew your domains as far out as they can before the prices change.
I hope you will have a wise choice, wish you success!
