Zerigo terminates annual plans mid-way to jack rates 19x

aka "How NOT to raise your prices on prepaid plans"

The last few years have been rough for Zerigo customers, with several well-publicized DNS outages.

As a reward for hanging in there, Zerigo sent an email this morning they will discontinued their DNS Essentials plan ($39/YEAR) and are replacing it January 31 2014 with a $63/MONTH plan. (pricing shown for 50 domains)...a 19-fold increase, one month's notice.

And no, they just confirmed, they will NOT wait until your current annual plan expires even though it is pre-paid (September 2014 in my case).

They will jack up the rate 19-fold, beginning Jan 31, applying a prorated credit, rather than letting current annual plans run their course.

To my mind, the rate increase might be reasonable if they really did upgrade their infrastructure to prevent further outages.

What is completely unacceptable IMO is a policy to terminate existing pre-paid plans mid-way rather than grandfather existing customers through the remaining months of their term.