Shut down some of its registrar accreditations? — Will DropCatch.com
Overhead costs are increasing as the firm grabs fewer expired domains.
Every month, I look at the latest data that Verisign files with ICANN, which shows .com activity at each registrar.
In recent months, there has been a notable drop in activity at TurnCommerce, the firm that operates DropCatch.com.
In addition to offering domain dropcatching to clients, the firm purchases lots of domain names for its HugeDomains portfolio.
The numbers show a steep drop in activity. In December 2023, its registrars had close to 6.0 million .com domains under management. In December 2024 (the latest month for which data is available), it had just 5.1 million .com domains.
It operates 1,201 registrars in addition to its main accreditation. In December 2023, the accreditations snagged an average of 58 domains. Last December, it was an average of 25.
Given its scale, this suggests that the firm isn’t acquiring as many domains for its own portfolio as it used to. It’s not possible to tell if clients have been dialing back their purchases, too.
DropCatch makes some big sales, and these help fill up the firm’s coffers. But I wonder if the firm will reduce the number of registrar accreditations it has if it continues to acquire fewer domains.
Registrars pay ICANN fees every year. These total a flat fee of $4,000, plus the registrar’s share of a total pie of $3.8 million (up from $3.4 million in 2024).
With 1,201 registrars, DropCatch is responsible for approximately 45% of the variable fees.
There’s a caveat: registrars get a 2/3rd reduction in their share of the variable fees if they have fewer than 350,000 registrations and no more than 200 attempted adds per successful net add in any TLD. Given that DropCatch pings the servers to try adding many domains during the drop, I’m unsure if it qualifies on the second factor. [Update: Kevin Murphy noted that the monthly Verisign files show how many attempted adds each registrar has. DropCatch’s registrars would not qualify for the exemption.]
Regardless, the $4,000 fixed fee is the bigger of the two expenses.
Assuming no reductions, I calculate that DropCatch pays regarding $8 of overhead to ICANN per domain when its registrars get 58 domains per month. This jumps to $18 when they only catch 25.
That’s a big difference, especially at scale. While DropCatch’s standard price is $59, it offers discounted backorders for as little as $13.
Add additional fees for each registrar, such as maintaining incorporation, and the cost increases even further.
Unless the firm plans to start catching more domains, I wouldn’t be surprised if it deletes some of its accreditations.
