> we of course need to markup on top of that to cover our processing costs, overhead to offer great support, mitigate abuse, etc
Why "of course"? Cloudflare is able to provide domains transfers and renewals at wholesale rates.
Why "of course"? Cloudflare is able to provide domains transfers and renewals at wholesale rates.
The markup from legacy registrars is probably excessive, but with Google, Cloudflare, etc getting into the game, they can likely offer wholesale pricing to support the rest of their (very) profitable product lines.
If I’m really worried about domain hijacking, locking, etc I’d use something like MarkMonitor.
$12.98 for a .com domain renewal is a 65% upcharge over the $7.85 wholesale rate. That is considerably more expensive than many of Namecheap's competitors.