A Letter from the President of Catalog.com

Yow! I registered a single name with these guys and just a few months later they are sashaying all over the road, looking for dinner.


(NOTE: We apologize if you receive this message more than once.)

I want to address questions you may have concerning our company, our new pricing structure and our vision of the future at Catalog.com. Let me say that we always value you as a customer, and we try our very best to provide the highest value for the lowest costs.

With this letter, I hope to clarify our position and answer your questions so you can make an informed decision about your domain registration and web hosting needs.

First, let me give you a little history. In 1994, Catalog.com was the first company in the world to offer shared hosting. Shared hosting is running multiple websites on the same server (computer).

We broke the pricing barrier significantly by selling hosting for $30 per month when most providers were over $100 and many as high as $1,000 per month.

In 1999, we were the first provider to combine domain registration with web hosting, thus, free hosting with a domain name emerged. Most of you probably remember how different things were in this industry in 1999.

At that time, we were able to fund the difference between our costs and what you paid with venture funding. Now, the bottom line is - we need to increase the price of administering an account by $24.95 per year.

When I say administering an account, I mean billing, collecting, technical support, etc.

An account is not the same as a Free web hosting product. We still offer Free web hosting as an option for each domain name you have with us.

The key thing we are doing now is a further unbundling of our products. Many customers only want a domain name and don't need free web hosting. Making the price split in the way we are enables us to remain competitive with domain name registration pricing.

Let me address some of the most frequently ask questions.

Question 1: Is Free Web Hosting with a Domain Name still free?

Yes. You can have as many domains and free web hosting products as you want, but there will be a $24.95 membership fee.

If you only have one product, it could seem like free web hosting isn't free, but if you don't need the hosting, and only want a domain name, you will like the price drop to $29.95 per year for a domain name.

If you have one domain name at $29.95 and one free hosting account at $0 and one annual membership fee at $24.95 - you pay only $54.90 per year. With the improvements we have made in the Free Hosting account, I challenge you to find a better value anywhere.

Question 2: Can I opt out of the membership fee?

Yes, if you cancel your free hosting product. You can keep your domain and not have a web site or email. You can also purchase any hosting product and not pay the fee. With the purchase of any hosting product, the membership fee is waived. Once you have one hosting product, you can have as many free hosting accounts as you want with only the cost of a domain.

If you want to do this, send an email to cancel@catalog.com with
explicit instructions including the exact domain name and tell us that you only want to cancel the free web hosting.

Question 3: When will the membership fee be billed and will it be billed to all my accounts?

The fee will be billed to current customers on September 15th. Please go
to https://signup.catalog.com/consolidate/index.php by August 31st to consolidate your accounts. You will then be charged only one membership fee, and if you have a paid hosting account or the summer special, the fee will be waived.

Question 4: Are your prices going up?

No. We are lowering the domain registration pricing to $29.95/year instead of $35/year. We are also keeping Free Hosting. We are rolling out two new hosting plans at $9.95 per month and $14.95 per month.

Question 5: What quality level is Free Hosting?

Our free hosting sets the industry standard for quality.

I would conservatively say that it is better than 95% of paid hosting plans available world-wide. Free hosting runs on Sun Servers, Network Appliance RAID disks arrays, Cisco Routers and offers more functionality than most hosting plans costing $24.95 per month.

Question 6: Am I charged the membership fee for each free web hosting account?

No. You will only be charged the membership fee once and can have as many free hosting accounts as you want.

I hope this email helps answer all your questions. We are making these changes to be more responsive to our customers and to continue to provide the highest level of service.

Again, I appreciate your business and hope you will continue to grow with us. Please check out our new pricing at: http://www.catalog.com/

Regards,

Bob Crull
President and CEO
Catalog.com, Inc.
bcrull@catalog.com


Every registrar has its pros and cons, but all I read here is con.

[DomeBase]

I can not comment on services overall, but during .INFO Land Rush 1 they charged a pre-registration fee to be the only person submitting a name on their Land Rush queue... and then later changed to accepting multiple submissions per name (thus much longer line and much lower chance of success). Not nice.

[Nic]

is going to the Dog House with the rst of the Stupid, "take advantage" registrars...

Too bad...it used to be great with the free web hosting it used to offer


Catalog you have F-ed Up....you are the weakest link, good bye

[NamePopper.com]

Interesting fact--I discovered that Catalog.com owns www.WebHero.com -- where in addition to web hosting--they also offer $9.95 domain registration. Substantial price difference between their two companies.