Yes, that seems to be the trend. Maybe the reason is well explained in this thread at HHO, by Gordon:These days I see a lot of offers for free domains when you pay for multiple years.
I decided to half the retail price of some of our domain names. This meant we were taking a loss on some of them.
The result was no increase in sales at all.
It seems that the only way to increase domain sales using price would be to charge $5 or less.
As some of you may know I tried giving away domain names for free last year and only managed to give away 150 in a month (there were no strings of any sort and I had budgeted to give away a few thousand).
People seem to respond best to an unfeasibly low price (i.e. sub Godaddy).
CrazyTech said:I've stayed away from even offering domains. The domain registration business is a terrible way to earn money right now. I'm not saying that it cannot be done, but to be successful you either need a lot of luck or a lot of money. It's too competitive for razor thin profit margins.
As for adding domains on - it has become a gimmick. We thought about it for a while, but the problem is, everyone is doing it. It's not an expected service, but when you can go have control of your domain at a trusted company that advertises on TV compared against the hosting horror stories, it's not worth it for the average client. It really isn't worth it for hosting companies in the end.