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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

It's not $20. It's $20 per year. I know that might be semantic for some people, but for much of these services, I wouldn't want it going away after 1 year if I'm unable to pay that cost again. And for that reason, I think it's worth noting.

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These are ongoing services so a once off payment doesn't make sense for the business. The alternatives are self-hosting and free services, self hosting is great. If you are using free services though, they could disappear too, and you have to question the business model of anyone givingyou something for nothing.

At least if you are paying for it you are entering into a contract of service from the provider which gives you a lot of legal recourse and leverage and also supports the business so that they do keep providing you the service.

Domain registration has to be renewed, either per year or per <x> years if you buy a bunch of licenses up front. So what's the alternative to this then? A lot of domains can cost around $20 per year.

The thing with a domain registration is that you know if you pay for ten years in advance, you WILL have it for ten years. With most SaaS, you have absolutely no guarantee this is going to be the case.

You will have it for 10 years unless they decide to take it from you. That doesn't happen often, but it certainly can.

Creating a subdomain once you have the domain is free, probably for the domain omg.lol they're paying $20 / year.

omg.lol was probably a premium domain of some kind. Random three-letter .lols seem to go for about $150/yr (according to gandi).

Yeah but they probably have more than 6 users? This is cool and shit, but they're profiting and I guess I'm fine with that.

It is totally reasonable to charge a recurring fee for providing an ongoing service, but to be clear you are not buying a domain that needs registration. You are buying a subdomain of the domains that this company already owns. Some other sites give those away for free because there is no marginal cost per subdomain.

> but to be clear you are not buying a domain that needs registration

Ah, good point.

> You are buying a subdomain of the domains that this company already owns.

All domains are like that, though, even TLDs.

Which in the end is true for domains as well. Someone decides to sell subdomains of X, weather X is com or omg.lol.

Com could be free as well. The only real difference is choice.

Or to put it differently, you say it doesnt need registration. Well, it does. They require it. So what.

I think the main difference is a proper domain from a major registrar grants you ownership rights that you don't get from leased subdomains like OP's (mainly the ability to keep the domain even if the registrar goes out of business; and moving the domain between registrars).

What do you mean “ownership rights”?

If you buy a gTLD domain through a registrar, your ownership of the domain is bound by the rules established by ICANN [1][2]. If you purchase an eTLD+1 [3] subdomain from omg.lol (as part of the offered services) you're not covered by [1][2] but instead by [4, Section 1.5 part B, Section 3.2 part A].

What this means is OP can arbitrarily shutdown their offering at their sole discretion and, as a result, you'll lose access to the eTLD+1 you've purchased (domain, email, all gone). However, if you purchase a gTLD domain through an ICANN accredited registrar, the registrar can't unilaterally do the same (even if the registrar implodes, you still own the domain and you can move it elsewhere).

[1] ICANN Registrants' Benefits and Responsibilities: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/benefits-2013-09-16-en

[2] ICANN Registrar Compliance Program: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrar-2012-02-25-e...

[3] https://jfhr.me/what-is-an-etld-+-1/

[4] Neatnik LLC (the company behind omg.lol): https://home.omg.lol/info/legal

The only real difference is that Verisign makes more money than omg.lol, hence they have more resources and incentives to not screw you over. That, of course, has incredible weight, and indeed I'd not trust omg.lol while I do trust Verisign.

You can move between registrars, but the registrar's not the one that you're leasing the domain from; they're just a reseller.

The entity that you're actually leasing the domain from is the registry operator-- such as Verisign for .com or PIR for .org. And, yes, it's still a lease relationship-- while there are some ICANN-mandated consumer protections around your "purchase" of a domain, if you stop paying your annual renewal (or run out of whatever amount of time you've prepaid), that domain isn't yours any more.

Omg.lol is operating the same way (albeit not under ICANN oversight, as they're not running a gTLD); they've just cut out the middleman and are leasing subdomains directly rather than via third-party registrars.

> Omg.lol is operating the same way

Not entirely true; I'd argue it's closer to subleasing a part of the property they're currently leasing from an ICANN accredited registrar.

> they've just cut out the middleman

Quite the opposite! They've just introduced themselves as yet another middleman on top of the already existing middleman (there's still a value proposition to this, but it's not the same).

TL;DR: subtenant rights ⊈ tenant rights

EDIT: typing mistake: replace ⊈ with ⊊ (proper subset)

I run a SaaS product and I do not charge my customers extra for a subdomain of their choice (if it has not been claimed by someone else already.)

What if they offered a 'lifetime' rate which is the NPV of $20 over 20 years, so like $1000 or something? You pay once and get it forever.

Of course, only as long as they can operate the service forever...

That’s the main issue I see, they can stop the service at any time and then you’ll have no chance to get the subdomain back. You’re in a much better position with an actual second-level domain, because you can move the domain between service providers and registrars, and depending on locality you may also have actual legal rights to keep owning the domain.

Even for newer second-level domains like .lol and cool-looking ccTLDs like .io, the possibility that the registrar is going to end it, become unstable, or change policy is real. They’re marketing gimmicks.

My domain is 26 per year. This is cheap af and I'm reconsidering ditching my domain in favour of this.

What if this service stops to exist after 2 years? Then any place you advertised/published this subdomain will need to be updated. With your own domain you won't have that issue, ever. Why would you give that up?

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