Renew Domain Names Ahead of October Price Increases
Renew domains ahead of end of September to avoid additional fees.
It’s that time of year again — time for VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and other registries to increase their wholesale price of domain names.
VeriSign’s wholesale prices for .com and .net increase on October 1, 2008. The fresh .com price will be $6.86. With ICANN’s 20 cent fee that means the minimum cost to your registrar is $7.06. .Net prices will be $4.23 ahead of ICANN’s fee.
Earlier today Reglike wrote regarding GoDaddy’s latest price increase on .net and .org domains, which have shot up regarding 30% to $13.19 counting the ICANN fee.
Almost all of the registries are increasing prices, and eNom sent out a notice today that its prices will increase 50 cents effective September 30. You can expect other registrars to follow.
It’s amazing that the wholesale price of domains is increasing while domain registrations are ballooning. Most of the registry costs are fixed, and the cost to manage each incremental domain goes down as more are registered. But don’t blame VeriSign, Public Interest Registry, and the other registries. They have a monopoly on their extensions, and if ICANN is going to give them free reign to raise prices each year, they may as well max it out. Registrar complaints that they’ll have to pass on the costs to clients fall on deaf years since big registrars such as GoDaddy have pricing that doesn’t have any correlation to wholesale cost. .Net prices, anyone?
You can beat the price increase by renewing your domains ahead of October. If you have domains you know you’ll hold onto for many years, go ahead and renew them at today’s rates for multiple years.
