Here is an important message for .COM domain owners. This flagship of international top-level domains is set to face a price hike, ending a nine-year moratorium and ushering in a turbulent period of pricing and inflation.
Verisign, the registry for the .COM top-level domain, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and the US government have agreed in a tripartite agreement that the price of .COM will rise by 7% this year and could rise by the same amount in 2022 and 2023. But that’s not all. There will be a pause in pricing in 2024 and 2025, but Verisign will have the right to resume price increases from 2026 to 2029.
So by the end of the period, the price of a .COM domain will be at least 60% higher than today. We therefore recommend that anyone who wants to lock in their outlay for the coming years should renew their .COM domains for as long as possible before 1 September.
Existing domain holders will be able to renew their domains registered for one year for a period of nine years, for two years for a period of eight years and so on. A domain already registered with us can be renewed in your Control Panel.
When registering a new .COM domain, we advise you to do so for 10 years from now – so you will not be affected by these upcoming price increases.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that end users may end up with a slightly larger change, as international service providers (like us) will have to hedge the risks of currency fluctuations in their prices.
It is also a good illustration of the extent to which the international internet community is dependent on US domestic politics. Indeed, such .COM price hikes were frozen in 2012 by Barack Obama and were rescued from the dam under the current conditions under Donald Trump. This decision is strongly associated with Trump’s self-imposed political goal of reversing as much of the Obama legislation as possible.
Incidentally, according to the agreement, Verisign could have started the price increase as early as 2020, but it postponed it due to the coronavirus pandemic.