Gothamist did a piece about NYC.com offering email addresses and their not cheap. The article looks at all of the recent attention around “NYC” branding. The new .NYC extension is mentioned along with the offering of email addresses from NYC.com.
From the article:
The email addresses are not free, they come with a monthly rent ($69, $99, $199, and $999 a month are the current prices). So, for example: a three character one (you@nyc.com) costs $99/month, and a one character email (u@nyc.com) costs $999/month. That’s $11,988 a year. In comparison: Gmail costs $0, and all your friends use it; Earthlink is also free, and all your grandmas use it. You have options that don’t include pricing tiers like this:
Suppose you decide you’re going to use an @NYC.com email address. You reference it in all your marketing materials for 3 years, paying $100 x 36 months = $3.6k. Then, after evaluating business expenses, let’s say you decide to cut costs. You realize you’ll be paying $6.4k during the next 7 years to maintain this vanity email address.
But can you discontinue using it once you’ve signed up? I’m guessing you can’t redirect an email address you no longer own. So past marketing that used your old @NYC.com email address is rendered worse than useless, since it will direct correspondence to a dead end. Worse still, that old email address might be reassigned to someone else. So if you walk away from it, then potentially sensitive messages may go to someone else without the knowledge or consent of either you (as intended recipient) or of the sender.
The penalty for walking away from one of these vanity email addresses might turn out to be severe. And with such a disincentive built into the process, maybe the provider of these email addresses will decide to raise the prices on customers afraid to leave.
Forget the cost. The risk is what would concern me.
Sean Miller, CEO of NYC.com here. Joseph, these are all valid concerns but allow me to make a couple points. First, you are obviously only looking at the downside here. The upside is that if you are using the email for business, the marketing $ you spend promoting your email should see a bigger return. So hopefully going forward you’ll be happy to retain your email.
That said, for anyone who leaves the service (no one has to date), we retire the email address for a minimum of a year. All email is forwarded and a reply is setup informing the sender of your new address. We value our customers and our reputation and aren’t in the business of extorting people.
And just FYI, most people who have bought the service use the email as their personal address. It adds a little sizzle to what is otherwise a boring exchange of email. Whatever one may think of it, many people really value the fact that they can own their own name or initials at such an intuitive email address. We created the product precisely because we were so often asked about our email. It just makes life easier to say “joseph@nyc.com” then “joseph456@gmail.com”. We price the product with that in mind. We want names to be available for the people who most value them. People spend considerably more on many things they value that are far more ephemeral.
Finally, RE other comments about .nyc. We love .nyc. Our traffic has gone up considerably as people visit nyc.com. No doubt we’ll soon be getting lots of misdirected email meant for .nyc domain emails as well. If i was giving out my .nyc email i’d make sure to invest a decent amount of time in ensuring the other person understands that .nyc is a new TLD. Then explain what that is, etc. Then maybe reflect on the value of that time and consider investing in an nyc.com email instead. 😉
Pros and cons and options, as with everything. Glad to see you make a case for the product.
Some people will have reservations (like me), and other customers will be just fine. I do agree that the vanity email addresses can look very classy. And that can pay off in a professional or personal sense, justifying the expense. So if your company manages the program in the best interests of customers, and if those customers are content to stay permanently without perceiving the cost as a burden, then an @NYC.com address may be a good idea for some people with ties to New York City.
They’ll want to evaluate in advance whether it’s a good fit. That’s all.
I had used the NYC.com email since 2006, when it was free.
Got a lot of people visiting the website because the extension “nyc.com” was really unusual and people kept asking how I got that email address. People really reacts when you show up with a email like that.
Did thousands of business cards, had my e-mail in hundreds of websites because of the photography startup I had, hundreds of contacts and after almost 10 years using it and helping in some way the brand to show up, they’ve decided to do not “care” about customers who were with them since the beginning.
Money talks louder!
Started charging $69 per month, without any options for those who were with them since the beginning, from one day to the other I just lost my access to the account.
I have no idea how many deals I’ve lost, how many opportunities I left behind for loosing an account I was using for so much time.
So, before getting an email like that, I would like future customers to know that they do not value their customers as the CEO mentioned above. Even if you have been with them for almost a decade. Tomorrow they might just decide to change the rules again and you will be as screwed as me.
Oh, and my e-mail was evandro@nyc.com. Still available after they kicked me from their “customers” list… If they do have one.
Cheers!
I am with Evan on this. I had my email with them since 2004 as a free account. However they jolted all of us with a $69 fee (they did give some one year discount at the time) with no options of forwarding email for a year nor set up an auto response for incoming mails. Within 30 days I, like many other users, were evicted from the service. Losing over a decade of my contacts, emails etc. The service runs through Gmail as well, and there is no differentiation from the NYC mail and gmail, sans the outrageous monthly fee. Customer service at its finest. Take home point: How the hell can an email address become gentrified.
Feels like last ditch effort by company that feels threatened by .nyc extension. There is no real reason for them to do it now, other then premonition that they might be in trouble. Or they trying to pick up on low hanging fruit, people who are not tech savy and confused by .nyc and nyc.com distinction.
That’s why I never like renting a place and relying on the kindness of strangers. I prefer living in my own house.
Why is everything treated like it is a scam or a terrible business idea in these comment boards? It is a legitimate product holding a legitimate value, if people want to buy it then so be it.
Any good idea will survive being vetted by a public that thinks critically and asks questions.
There is a good idea, and then there is quick money scam. This one is much closer to later then former.
It charges a MONTH for an email. I dont know one service that does that …. a month. And we not talking about $5 a month, how about 70$ and up?? If this not insane, i dont know what is. Considering that if you lose your email year later, you pretty much screwed for what ever you been using.
I got some great .nyc emails with 3 characters in front and back, if you need one. will sell you for 50$ a month, a great deal you save 20$ per month. I think that crazy good deal to pass on.
anyone using email for business or anything that you realllly don’t want to lose should be using their own domain. Otherwise you are at the whim of providers should they shut down, up the price or become unreliable. With your own domain you can have the same email address forever and move it where you please.