.com prices could rise 7% a year

VeriSign is about to get the ability to raise the price of .com domains by 7% a year under a new contract with ICANN.

These price increases will almost certainly be passed on to registrants like you. No big deal if you only have a few domains, but a huge deal if you have lots of domains.

Domain prices have been coming down for five years. Many people think it's wrong that VeriSign should be able to arbitrarily raise prices.

Here's some press coverage.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11104649/

"Currently, VeriSign charges domain name resellers, called registrars, $6 per ".com" name; registrars can then charge domain name buyers whatever they like, incorporating that $6 annual fee into the basic price. If the deal is approved, VeriSign would be allowed to raise that fee, which registrars could then pass along to customers.

The new settlement would limit those increases.

In any two of the next six years, VeriSign could raise fees by up to 7 percent a year only in response to a security threat or to comply with an ICANN mandate.

But that leaves four years in which Verisign could raise rates by 7 percent annually without having to justify the increases"​

ICANN is accepting public comments. If they get enough negative responses, they may decide to vote the deal down instead of accepting it.

http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-29jan06.htm

There's a mailto: at the bottom of the page for submitting comments. You have until February 20.

 

I would certainly write to them.

I don't want the prices to go high other wise will have a hard time renewing my domains.

Thanks.

 

Personally I don't think its enough...7% is peanuts.

I would rather see a 700% increase which would free up millions of domain names

 

That would be better if it Hikes a Lot may be we get a Chance from those expired ones

 

Hmm I am sure that you must be kidding because if you are not it will become almost impossible for newbie like me to buy domains or renew it. I think what need to be done is somehow come up with some mechanism to get the big sharks pay. May be the fees shud increase exponentially with the number of domains u have.And I am sure that people are aware that buying domains on fake names is illegal(is it ?).

 

Actually I'm not kidding...I really do think .com's should be in the $40-$60 range per year.

I have no problem with .net, etc staying at its current rate which will allow people to economically design a personal site or get their start

 

It will definately cut out a lot of small people who purchase domains with the sole intention of simply selling them for a higher amount.

 

More importantly it will cut out the people buying 100's if not 1000's and just sitting on them.

It will also severly cut down on spammy landing pages (although they will still exist on some common names), therefore improving the quality of .com's in general.

 

I agree. All domains are underpriced at the moment. There should be a bargain domain extension which allows anybody to get a website/blog and then premium domains for proper sites.

The bargain extension could even be free and subsidised by the premium ones.

A quick look in the buy,sell and trade section on this forum shows loads of domains for sale for a few dollars more than the reg fee.

 

why only on .com?

 

I wanna be anti-competitive !!!

 

I agree with raising them a lot. If you develop the site, there is no reason why $50 should be a problem. And there are way too many pointless sites that are just domain parking and not making the internets better at all.

 

.free domains should be released

 

.free lol!

ran out of green rep im afraid

 

To you maybe not.

Some some it could be a problem, especially if you are just starting out. Then multiply that times how ever many domains you have, multiply that times however many years you register them for.... Many Work At Home Moms and Dads have a hard enough time paying the $10 a year plus hosting let alone $50 a year.

Most people aren't "hundred-thousandaires" let alone millionaires.

Get off your high horse.

 

Then don't buy from Verisign... Become your own Registrar, or buy from another ICANN accredited registrar... Just an FYI, Registrars, pay $3/domain year....

 

No offense, but this is part of doing business... I'd get used to it if I were you. If I had a nickle for every time something cost wise went up in my business, I would be a millionare many times over.

Costs go up. They can't keep going down. Did it ever occur to you that the places selling you services have rising costs too? Heat, gas, INSURANCE... to name a few, most of which have increased continually for several years now, while prices in the market have continued to go down.

One last thing I am curious about... Why are so many people buying so many friggin domains??? What is the point? Either way, domains are dirt cheap right now, a 7% increase is nothing. Shop around if price is a concern. One thing everyone needs to realize if you are gonna get in this business, costs go up, and we all pass the costs on. I like to think of it as "trickle up" economics.

 

I am not worried about me, I am worried about the micro-businesses, the mom and pop shops who are just trying to get their foot in the door.

Yes- costs go up and they should-but gradually. I never said the cost should not go up, I said the person who said it should be $50 should get off their high horse.

Besides, domains are not only used to make money. People have domain names for their pets, their family reunions, their churches, their youth groups, etc. etc.

 

That's not possible. If you want a .com you *have to* buy from VeriSign. VeriSign is the registry, not the registrar. You can switch registrars, but they all get their .coms from VeriSign. And they pay VeriSign $6/domain/year, not $3.

Buy a $9 name from Go Daddy, and Go Daddy only gets $3 of that. VeriSign gets the rest. If VeriSign raises prices to say, $8, then Go Daddy either has to raise its prices too, or swallow the difference and make a $1 profit.

 

I certainly wouldn't mind higher prices if it means more available domains and less junksites. However, if you look at the actual costs of operating a domain registry the prices are already high.

I don't think a company should make billions on a trivial thing as selling records in a database. Maybe the money could be invested in the Internet's infrastructure in some way.