I think the reasons are they are pushing a competing product.

At home and at the shop where I work. At work the drives are actually stored in a Faraday cage.

Two hard drives of the same size, one on site and one off site.

I believe they are seeing higher prices for those domains so they are passing it along. Email I received from Namecheap.com:

We partner with many registries to bring you a wide range of top-level domains, but occasionally their prices increase, which means we need to increase our prices too.

On September 1, 2023, the domains registry for .COM and .XYZ will implement universal price increases of up to 9% for .COM renewals, and up to 9% for .XYZ renewals, registrations, and transfers.

If you want to take advantage of the current price tag, renew your .COM and renew, register, or transfer your .XYZ domains before September 1, 2023.

It always puzzles me when technology gets more expensive. Processors and storage are cheaper, why does it cost more for them to have a database entry for a domain that’s updated every X years?

I pay more for 200/20, but no limits. That sucks!

It’s funny how the pendulum swings, first people would never let other people have their files, then they invested wholesale in cloud computing, now they are seeing the downtimes and expense and are backing off.

Same thing with client/server, had it in mainframe days, then got away from it with PCs, now we have Chromebooks and Microsoft wants Windows to run from the cloud, which is basically back to client/server again.

I forgot how bad the default site was, I’m a regular Wired reader and have blocked things on at least a weekly basis.