The group of gTLD ‘veterans’ will undergo a parallel price update on May 16th in accordance with several significant market shifts over the last few years.

Learn more about the upcoming .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ price updates and see how your domain portfolio will stand against the competition after it takes effect.

Why is the price increase needed?

As you may have already noticed, over the last few years the generic TLD registries have updated their domain registration prices on a consistent basis.

The price increase practice started over 10 years ago when ICANN allowed the respective generic registries to increase the cost of registering a domain by however much they deem appropriate.

The main reason behind that move were the registries’ long-term strategic plans to upgrade their security & support infrastructures to the benefit of the domain owners themselves.

Those require substantial funding, the main source of which could namely be the revenue generated by the future domain registrations/transfers/renewals.

Here is a short overview of the TLD price change history:

• .COM – the most popular TLD on the web is managed by Verisign. Verisign’s deal with ICANN in 2007 originally allowed them to increase the price of .COM domains by 7% per year.
  
  Five years later, however, the U.S. government demanded that the price be frozen for a certain period of time. Verisign and ICANN in turn re-negotiated their contract and agreed on a ‘price freeze’ until 2024.
• .NET – originally, the .NET domain price increases were more sporadic prior to 2012.
  
  Since 2013, however, the .NET’s registry Verisign has been implementing a 10% incremental pricing policy on an yearly basis.
• .BIZ – the first substantial registration/renewal price increase for the Neustar-managed gTLD was introduced in September 2013 when the price for a .BIZ domain was raised by 10%.
  
  The second massive price increase came two years later, prompting a parallel .BIZ price change on the market. The same scenario was repeated last year when another 10% were added on top of the .BIZ gTLD’s price.
• .INFO – just like with .BIZ, the most significant .INFO price update was initiated in 2013 (by Afilias – the TLD’s registry) and was followed by two other increases (the final one was carried out last summer).
• .ORG – the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the overseer of .ORG domains, also made use of its contract rights and initiated a series of updates over the last few years.

What is the price update all about?

In order to minimize the negative effect of this pricing policy on your domain portfolio, over the past five years we’ve done our best to refrain from implementing consistent price updates with the exception of the cases where the new registry prices have gone way higher than expected.

With the new series of gTLD price hikes anticipated to take place throughout 2018 (in fact, the .NET registry already implemented its campaign in February), we’ll be forced to carry out a gTLD-wide price update on our platform as well.

That said, on May 16th, 2018, the .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ and .INFO domain registration, transfer and renewal prices will be increased by an average of 20%.

Promo prices of domain names coupled withe a hosting plan will be updated too. 

We’ll be forced to suspend the ‘free-domain-with-a-hosting-plan’ offer for our .NET domains as well.

NOTE: The new price will also apply to all hosting plan-included .NET domains that have been registered for free.

The .COM promotion will not be affected by this update for the time being.

What do you need to do to implement these changes?

The new gTLD prices will be automatically reflected in your account on May 16th.

We recommend that you update your prices accordingly on that day to make sure you keep up with the profit margin that you initially set.

You can do that from the Domain Prices section of your Reseller Control Panel. 

NOTE: To minimize the impact of this price update on your business, we have set the lowest possible price level so that you could still offer a competitive gTLD price, whereas a substantial price shift has already been untertaken market-wide a long time ago.