Domain registration price increases

Verisign has pricing increases going into effect on July 1st. As a result of these pricing changes, our registrar partner has informed us of corresponding increases which we must, in turn, pass along.

Effective July 1st, the new price for domain registrations, renewals, and transfers will increase from $8.59/year to $8.99/year.

Get your domain renewals in now to avoid the increase.

These changes have nothing to do with us, are not under our control, and are of no benefit to us. They’re bad for us, and they’re bad for you. Unfortunately, the same (auto-renewing into perpetuity) contracts with ICANN that grant Verisign a monopoly over .COM, .NET, and .NAME domains (among others) enshrine Verisign’s right to unilaterally raise prices by 7% every year, and they never miss a chance to do so. Their 30% profit margin in 2009 will almost certainly increase after they finish unloading everything not domain-related onto Symantec. It’s not bad work if you can get it. (And live with yourself afterward.)

8 Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

1. Thanks for the transparency on this.

   (An off-topic question was removed. -jdw)

   Comment by Nick — June 10, 2010 #

2. Does this only concern Verisign TLDs, or all TLDs (like .org)?

   Our registrar maintains a single price for all the TLDs we offer, indexed to .com (since it is something like 2/3rds of all registrations). -jdw

   Comment by David T. — June 10, 2010 #

3. Thanks for the advance notification. I was under the impression that domain registrations too (like most things related to technology) would become cheaper with time.

   Anyway, this is not a huge increase in absolute terms (although the monopoly bit is worrying), but I’m glad I renewed my domains to the 10 year limit sometime ago.

   Comment by M — June 12, 2010 #

4. Thank you for the transparency.
   -davekov.com

   Comment by www.davekov.com — June 13, 2010 #

5. Thanks for letting us know. It sucks when organisations are given this power and they abuse it for their gain.

   Of course they can live with themselves – with that kind of profit margin they’re rolling in dough, and that’s all that matters to them.

   Comment by frank1985 — June 16, 2010 #

6. Thanks for letting us know. Glad I just registered mine for a year. $0.50 isn’t that bad, I was expecting a few dollars.

   Why the increase though?

   Comment by Arron Hunt — June 18, 2010 #

7. AAron: Why the increase though?

   “Donald, whenever someone says ‘why did they’ or ‘why don’t they’, the answer is almost always ‘money’.” – Maureen Johnson in Robert A. Heinlein’s “To Sail Beyond the Sunset.”

   In this case the answer is, quite simply, because they can.

   Comment by Paul Robinson — June 30, 2010 #

8. Good intel and honest. I like that.

   Comment by exius — July 4, 2010 #

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.