Cloudflare moves into the domain reg space

[BoL]

"at cost" for gTLDs

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-registrar/

https://dash.cloudflare.com/domains

[ergophobe]

Honestly, when I see a business that is offering something at cost or for free, that's a red flag for me. I worry about their business model.

Free SSL makes sense not that we have Let's Encrypt.

But I get a small number of other services from Namecheap - email forwarding, DNS management that I like, etc. Maybe they cost more than they should, but surely there has to be some profit built in for the registrar for it to be sustainable.

The alternative is the Google model. Get you on there with free services and sell your data/attention.

[BoL]

Pretty much how I feel. There's the couple of grand it costs for the privilege of being a registrar + the cost of DNS, emails, admin for complains on domains etc. The markup shouldn't be much.

But for the likes of CF the upsells may cover it, in the end someone is paying.

[ergophobe]

Yes, it's basically a freemium model. I don't *hate* that model, but it always makes me uneasy when the premium is more than I would pay.

In other words, if the premium version seems worth it, but I can get by without it, then I don't mind. If I am forced into upgrading, then so be it.

But if the premium version is at a price point I would not pay for that offering, then I'm very worried about being forced into an upgrade.

That said, I do use Cloudflare DNS, so call me a hypocrite. I'm not sure I want to keep using them though, but that's another story.

[aaron]

If you grow fast enough you don't need profits. 

There's almost no faster means of growth than making someone else's paid service free.

Whatever friction is removed at one part of the value chain ultimately gets added at another, but for company which does some enterprise sales they can certainly view the no margin revenues from smaller business as sort of a PR & branding move to eventually own more of the enterprise market.

In 2011 private equity investors bought 65% of GoDaddy for $2.25 billion & now it is valued north of $14 billion. About 6 weeks ago big GoDaddy investors KKR, Silver Lake & Godaddy's founder (all there from pre-IPO) sold almost a billion in stock.

[ergophobe]

Has anyone switched to CF?

They have started sending me "your domain is going to expire in 45 day, why not switch to Cloudflare?" emails. I really like their DNS and their price is good and ultimately it would be one less login/provider to track (using Namecheap for most, maybe all, domains right now).

It's been three years and they seem to be going strong, so it seems safe.