… starting from the point where the story stopped.
Here is what the rest of the email (translated into English) was announcing:
In this context, we inform you that the GandiMail service (included with your domain name) will end on November 30, 2023. You can easily convert each of your existing email addresses to our new MailBox offer.
In addition, note that we are updating our pricing policy for all of our products as of July 13, 2023 (EUR USD TWD).
Online documentation (FAQ) is available to answer your questions about managing your existing email addresses.
If our online FAQ does not meet your expectations, our teams remain at your disposal from the email address below: supportnewmb-fr@support.gandi.net
We thank you for your trust and loyalty.
Sincerely,
The Gandi team
“What! Not only are gandi.net increasing their prices – again – but they also remove their free e-mail service! They have to be kidding me!”
Yet another price hike
A quick1 look at their price list revealed that the new rate for a .com domain name is 23.99 euros! This is just not acceptable. The 15.69 euro rate that I signed for was already high compared to other companies, but this was justified by their offer. Here is what I had to say about it back then:
Gandi pricing may be higher than what other companies may charge for domain name registration, however, when you consider Gandi’s full range of services, the reality is different.CogitActive
That being said, what would be a reasonable price increase? 5 %? 10 %? Let’s do some math…
| Year | Price (euros) | Increase from the previous year |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 15.60 | 0 |
| 2020 | 15.60 | 0 |
| 2021 | 16.69 | 6.99 % |
| 2022 | 18.61 | 11.50 % |
| 2023 | 23.99 | 28.91 % |
And if I would have compared the 2023 price to the original 15.60 euros, we would be talking about a 53.78 % increase!
Customers […] have done their calculations: the price increases announced for July 13 are incommensurate with the more traditional ones observed over the years.Mathilde Saliou
A way to predict the values of future events is to look at the past. With historical time-based data (see above table), you can indeed find the overall direction of the data and extrapolate from there. I did just that using a trendline2, also referred to as a line of best fit. As you can see from the graph below, there are reasons to worry about future pricing updates from gandi.net.
Is gandi.net still the best option for my registrar?
Out of the frying pan into the fire
As explained in the previous post, the two GandiMail mailboxes coming for free with each domain name registration were one of the many distinctive features that made me choose gandi.net over their competitors. When I first read their email, I was confused:
“How can you end your email service? You just wrote3 that you have ‘a new optimized messaging service’…”
Indeed, given the aforementioned price hike and their No Bullshit
philosophy, I naively thought that the latter was justified by their new email offer: A larger storage space for your mailbox (from 3 GB to 10 GB)
. Oh, naive!
You can easily convert each of your existing email addresses to our new MailBox offer.
However, when I clicked on the link to their FAQ – new Gandi mailbox offer and management of your existing addresses – I realized that it was time for gandi.net to change their tagline!
Why should I pay for my mailbox that is supposed to be included?
You will need to convert your mailboxes to our new Mail service no later than November 30, 2023. If you do nothing for your included mailboxes, we will suspend your GandiMail service on November 30, 2023, or the renewal date of your domain name if it occurs before November 30. You will have the possibility to unlock your mailbox by switching to the new email offer.
This announcement is particularly harsh for people who have paid for multiple years in advance. While they may keep the already paid-for domain, the mail service is taken away from them, unless they pay extra. Thus, people complain about this update: “No forewarning, no post on the website, no justification, and the nasty news buried in the middle of unrelated text. It appears designed to deceive. ‘No bullshit’ is no more.”Hanna
This means that I will have to pay more for my existing services and the new Mailbox service. My math was completely wrong! I thought I would have to pay 23.99 euros for the same service indeed, but in reality, with a €4.79 per month Mail service (and my two existing mailboxes) I should now pay:
23.99 + 4.79 x 12 + 4.79 x 12 = 138.95 euros
Now, we are talking about a 646.64 % increase in price compared to last year! No way!!!
To be continued…
1 As reported elsewhere, people have complained about the way they were informed.
It took me a while indeed to figure out how to read their new price list – an obscure document that looks like an Excel file – and to understand the price variations, classified in columns A, B, C, D, and E, that came without any explanation. . ^
2 Using an order 3 polynomial function: y = 0.153x3 – 926.57x2 + 2E+06x – 1E+09 ^
3 See gandi.net – disappointing and untrustworthy! In the first part of the e-mail, they stated We are committed to developing a certain number of new functionalities such as a […] new optimized messaging service, adapted to your needs.
^