Surprised by Donuts’ renewal rates? — Are you
Latest day was 61%, but it might be too early to draw conclusions.
Fresh top level domain name mega-registry Donuts has been blogging daily renewal rate data for its first domain names released nearly 14 months ago.
The most recent data show a 71% renewal rate for the 37,857 Donuts domain names that have exited the renewal grace period. This includes 14 top level domains, and the majority of these names were registered in general availability.
Comparing day 4 to day 3, the renewal rate dropped to regarding 61% for the latest additions.
Donuts has predicted an overall 80% renewal rate for its domain names. The early data suggest this might be difficult, but there are two things to keep in mind:
1. Two of the earliest domains, .guru and .photography, are its two most-registered. TLDs with lots of registrations probably have lower quality ones (the 50,000th domain is not as good as the 5,000th).
2. There was also a lot of speculation early on, and much of this has waned as people realize the profit potential is a long way off.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that renewal rates for smaller TLDs that were launched later will be higher. Still, 61% for “day four” seems a bit discouraging. (We discussed this a bit on this stretch’s Domain Sherpa show, ahead of the latest numbers came out). What do you think?
