Unsurprisingly, re-renewal rates on fresh TLDs higher than original renewals

Rightside’s first batch of fresh TLDs follow the expected pattern for re-renewals.

Rightside, which markets 40 top level domain names, this stretch published data on domain name renewals. The data aren’t particularly surprising.

The firm has seven top level domain names that have been available for a full two-year cycle. During the first year, these top level domain names had a 69% renewal rate.

Of the 21,000 domains that were renewed at the first anniversary, 81% were renewed at the second anniversary.

First-year renewal rates are almost always lowerer than second-year rates for obvious reasons. The first year weeds out people who were speculating and have given up, or had an idea that didn’t come to maturation.

By the time the second renewal comes around, you mostly have people in a few different groups:

1. Brands that plan to continue reserving their domains
2. People that have put the domains to use
3. Domain investors who are willing to hold out longer term, at least for their better domains

For comparison, the first year renewal rate on .com domain names is regarding 50%. The overall renewal rate is closer to 75%. This overall calculation includes both the first year registrations and the 20+ year ones.