Last month I got a renewal notice for our security certificate for our website, and I thought ok, we are up for another $15, no problems right? Wrong. It’s now $85 to renew! At no time during that initial sign up process did they mention that 1 year fee is significantly less than subsequent year fees. I mean imagine if they had credit cards where you have a significantly smaller interest rate the first period than subsequent periods? Or imagine if they had printers where the ink costs more than the whole printer.. oh wait. That actually happens…
Anyway after letting that experience digest, I went to renew a domain name today, and again the price to renew is more than the initial price. What is worse is that they tried to get me to buy another domain name in the 4 pages of upselling before I was allowed to press “submit” and the price to buy the new domain was half the price of my renewal order.More and more I felt ripped off for renewal for such a high price.
So, the lesson for today - check to see what the renewal fees for SSL and domain names before you order. If you can’t find any information about it, then contact them and don’t order until you know for sure. Chances are the reason the information is not readily available is because it will be a lot higher than the initial fee.