The price differences among the various services can be great depending on the number of .de domains to be registered. However, a domain portfolio with international character must also include domains which go beyond the territorial name “.de”. The prices for additional international domains differ greatly among all of the services (as per 02 December 2008) from those of “.de” because DENIC, in contrast to other registries, works as a non-profit enterprise and offers the domains at cost. Whereas the registrar Hetzner charges €11.90 for a .com, .net, or .eu domain, a domain below .ag for two years costs €330. The charges for the registration of a Polish or Russian domain run to €149 and €99, respectively.

Owing to the dependency on the selected registrar, the creation of an international domain portfolio will involve higher fees than that of a national domain portfolio. A tie-in of the portfolio with the company and product names as well as with theoretical typographical errors for all of the top-level domains which come under consideration forces a company to order a large number of domains, increasingly additionally the cost factor for the firm. If the company is strictly oriented to a national level, domains of a country-specific top-level domain are required, so the portfolio and the incurred costs remain manageable.

The harm to a company’s image which can result from missing domains cannot be expressed in figures, but from a marketing and entrepreneurial point of view, it should be avoided at all costs. If a name is not secured early enough, there is a risk that the domain will be registered by another person or company. If the name was registered by a domain trader, it is possible to purchase or buy the domain in an auction on special platforms such as Sedo (www.sedo.de) or domainhandel.de. The costs for buying back a name or conducting a court case to acquire the name will exceed the actual costs of the registration by many times. The company must take the creation of a large and comprehensive portfolio into account and carry it out right in the budget.

Management of the portfolio contents

When a domain is ordered, the company defines the time period for which the domain name is to be registered. When this time period expires, steps must be taken to ensure that the domain name is extended and that the automatic deletion of the domain is prevented. The portfolio administrator requires a list of the complete contents for this purpose, plus a checklist of the domains which are approaching the end of the registration period. The administrator must ensure that required domains are not deleted and whenever possible are automatically renewed beyond the current registration period. As a precaution, domain names can be registered or renewed for several years so that this problem is headed off well in advance. The loss of an actively utilized domain must be avoided to prevent harm to the company’s image when current customers or potential new customers are unable to reach the Web site or to communicate by e-mail. If the domain is lost, it once again becomes generally available and can be registered by other persons or companies.