The current situation with the Croatian .hr domains is as follows. Anyone (as long as you are a Croat) can register .hr domain for a price of 615,00 croatian kuna ($106 US, depending on the currency rate). You can also register com.hr for 50,00 croatian kuna ($8,61 US).
Under the current rule book, users are forbiden to resell their .hr and .com.hr domains. I would love to link the current rule book, but it’s only in Croatian, and foreigners are not allowed to buy .hr domains so there is no point anyway. Basically I believe that this is the reason why domaining in Croatia is virtualy non-existent. Hopefully some people will contact me to tell me this is not true, but this is just my wish.
.hr domain market
This also makes it more difficult for the outsiders to get great domains, and invest in development of great web sites and services. It also kills domainers, because no one wants to buy 10 hr domains and try to sell them since this would mean they are in violation of the terms and conditions. And also, to put it bluntly they cannot sell them to foreigners that have more money than Croatians.
It also doesn’t help that base price is very expensive, especially for Croatian standards and if you take into concideration the market coditions in Croatia.
If you compare this to the preety unique and popular Montenegro ccTLD .me (which has great brand possibilities and is open to the world and reselling) the difference in success of a ccTLD is preety obvious. Maybe CARNet’s (Croatian Academic Research Network) goal isn’t popularity of .hr domains and generating aditional income to Croatian’s industry experts in hosting, domains and web design. This offcourse makes it difficult to increase profits for some great Croatian companies who work their tail of to promote their clients. Companies like Avalon who are accredited registrar of hr and com.hr domains, or LogIT, a web design and development company who cannot resell their clients some additional interesting domains and Iconis marketing strategy and brand agency that cannot resell to their Croatian clients some interesting brandable hr domains. CARNet can do so much more for this ecosystem.
The only good news, CARNet finally enabled online registration of free .hr domains, which only companies can register for free. Can you imagine that just few weeks ago, you had to do this with paperwork?!
carnet, com.hr, hr, hr cctld, hr domains
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