I was unpleasantly surprised when netfirms.com sent me an Invoice for domain renewal for the amount of 11.99. All these years it was 9.99. They also wrote a letter of explanation why they needed to raise the cost: http://www.netfirms.com/domain-names/price-change-update.php Did other domain providers also raise the prices?
I still get renewals from GoDaddy for $9.99 a year. All new domains from GoDaddy are now $11.99. This maybe why they have done it. I suggest you email them and ask.
That's strange, I got an email from Netfirms promoting their $7.99 sale , there is a $6.95 special announced on Facebook and their coupon code for November's Black Friday $4.95 sale is still working so I have no idea from where you came up with that raised price, since my control panel also say $7.99 for renewal.
ShopSmartDomainsdotcom is where I head for, for a new dotcom. They're still at $9.97 for one year, with discounts for longer.
I also think same as you. At 2010 they domain registrar companies increased the prices. I remember that i registered lots of my domain names for $7-8 each. Now i am renewing them for $10-11 My registrar is Godaddy by the way.
Have y'all not heard of Internet.bs? They have one of the best rates so far. They even integrated Google Apps registration in just 2-3 clicks, so you don't need to worry where to set up your CNAME or so forth. .com is $7.49 + ICANN fees.
I have used http://powerhoster.com for years. Sometimes other sites under-cut them for a while - but they are consistently one of the cheapest around. They have raised their prices over the last year, but dot coms are still just $8.75
It seems like a lot of companies like Netfirms attract customers with prices as low as 6$ per domain but then charge 11.99$ for domain renewal.
Yes, the price just went up for all registrars. But you still can renew your domains for less than $10. Just transfer them to somewhere else. Or, if it's too late, just renew at netfirms and then transfer out.