Earlier this week, GoDaddy teased changes to its Domain Discount Club (DDC). It revealed full details today, and I have a feeling domain investors won’t be pleased.
Essentially, GoDaddy is adding a third, more expensive tier to DDC called Domain Discount Club Pro.
This third tier will be for domain investors and include access to various investment tools: Domain Academy, self-brokerage at Afternic, GoDaddy Auctions membership, GoDaddy search data on their domains, etc. These were previously included with the Premium level of DDC; now, users must upgrade to a higher tier to obtain them. Update: Customers will continue to get search data on their domains at GoDaddy. The Pro accounts will get data for their Afternic listings.
The new Pro level will cost $359.88 per year, up from $239.88 for the Premium level.
To ease the transition, GoDaddy will upgrade existing DDC accounts used by domain investors to the Pro level at no additional cost. The next renewal will be at the previous $239.88 price, and then the renewal after that will be $359.88. (If you don’t currently have DDC, there’s a first-year promo for 25% off the new Pro price.)
Customers who stick with Premium will pay more for domain names than they currently do. The Premium level .com price will increase to $11.99; the Pro level will remain at the lower price of $10.99 for .com. Pro also gets $10.26 for new .com registrations until September 1 of this year.
Domain investors will likely view this change as merely paying more for the same thing they’re getting today. If I were GoDaddy, I’d try to add some significant value before the higher-priced renewals come along.