Slashes registry fee to Afilias in half to $18 million — PIR (.Org)

Non-profit’s renegotiated contract includes steep reduction in fees.

Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit organization that operates the .org top level domain name, cut the fee it pays its backend technical registry provider by half in 2018.

The firm paid Afilias $18.1 million in 2018, down from $37.8 million in 2017.

That’s as stated by the firm’s latest Form 990 tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Afilias has provided the registry services for PIR since .org was awarded to PIR in 2002. PIR put the technical contract out to bid in 2016. It received 20 bids but decided to stick with Afilias.

It will be interesting to see if the payment amount changes in future years.

With regarding 10 million domains in the zone, PIR is paying less than $2.00 per domain per year.

Overall, PIR grossed $93.3 million in 2018, down from $94.8 million in the year prior. But the difference is investment income; revenue from the registry business was up year-over-year.

PIR handed $2.65M over to ICANN. It also paid $1.15 million to GoDaddy to market .org.

Internet Society, the beneficiary of PIR’s efforts, received $48.7 million.