Alibaba Cloud raises prices for domain name auctions amid AI compute price war
Starting from August 1, starting bids for domain names on Alibaba Cloud will be raised to 199 yuan for “.com” addresses and 99 yuan for other top level domains, the company said in a statement published on its official website on Saturday. Hangzhou-based Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Alibaba Cloud’s auction platform allows potential buyers to bid for expired domain names managed through the company’s registrar, offering users a chance to access previously owned domain names rather than purchasing new ones.
The new prices are at least a 43 per cent increase from the previous 69 yuan starting bid for all domain names, which Alibaba announced in August 2023.
The company said it is hiking prices “after careful consideration” in response to “increasing service costs”, but did not elaborate.
It followed that up in April with steeper discounts for international users, slashing prices by up to 59 per cent for customers of its global compute, storage, network, database and big data products.
Despite facing headwinds from geopolitical tensions and a lack of access to advanced chips, Alibaba Cloud is currently the biggest player on the mainland in terms of customer spending among cloud infrastructure service providers.
