alt Hacker Newsnamecheap purchased by private equity CVC in 2025 for $1.5B
so costs need to go down (-human support + ai automation)
and prices go up (they increased i think .com 3 times this year alone)
Replies
To give people a bit of insight into the domain registry industry, when a registrar increase domain prices there are generally four reason why they do it.
1) The registrar want to increase its margins.
2) The registry upstream increased their price. For .com, Verisign agreement with ICANN allow Verisign to increase the price by 7% in each of the final four years of every six-year cycle. As such they increased it in 2024 and will do so again on November 1, 2026.
3) The registrar is not a direct registrar and uses a middle man, and the middle man want to increase its margins.
4) The buyer or the registrar is operating on a different currency than the registry, and the registrar is compensating for changes in the currency valuation.
They were already a sub-par registrar a decade ago, or more. You can find many namecheap horror stories without much trouble. I moved away from them years ago due to various shenanigans and never looked back.
Ohhh so that’s why I got those price increases emails. Yay. What are some good alternatives?
And well, business goes down.
I purchased a domain name from them yesterday, in addition to a few I already had.
This will be the last purchase unless I see some significant traction in the case we're discussing in particular, and company wide in general.
Hope others will do the same. Not punishing this behavior is encouraging such abuse in the entire industry (if Namecheap gets away with that, everyone else will follow).
>namecheap purchased by private equity CVC in 2025 for $1.5B
Ahhh crap, there goes the company down the toilet. And they were the place I trusted to buy my domain names from.
Damnit. I liked them for their simplicity, lack of bullshit, and cheaq costs. Know any recommended alternatives? (Edit: Nevermind, I see are suggestions elsewhere in this discussion).
Is there a directory of private equity acquisitions? Maybe even a browser extension that flags the websites of acquired companies.
Such acquisitions are often due to founders cashing out or retiring, and the first thing private equity does is switch gears to "extraction mode". As such, I would think twice before (a) making a long-term commitment to their services, or (b) spending time applying for a job there.