The price cut snaped a period of mediocre growth for Interland, which had averaged just 10.3K new sites per month over the previous five months. That's considerably less than the average monthly gain of 36.7K new sites over the same period for Yahoo, one of Interland's chief competitors in the small business shared hosting market. Yahoo's numbers have strengthened since August, when it lowered its domain pricing to $9.95 per year.
Interland's move continued a trend in which leading hosting companies are using aggressive domain pricing to acquire new business. Seven of the top 20 hosting providers (as measured by hostnames) now sell domain names for $9.95 a year or less.
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1&1 Internet, already the low price leader in the .com arena, is cutting prices to $2.99 for .name domains, offering an unlimited number of signups at that price through Dec. 21. "The .NAME promotion is intended to help our customers make a distinctive mark on the Web," said Andreas Gauger, 1&1's Chairman. "It opens new possibilities for users who want to personalize their Web presence with a particular name that may not be available on another TLD (top level domain)."
In other pricing news, eNom's Sipence business unit is selling domains directly to the public for $6.95. eNom's resellers have been its primary sales channel, leading it maintain its own retail pricing at $29.95 a year to avoid competing with its own customers.