A few minutes ago, Elliot pointed out that GoDaddy just emailed its customers about a Dot Net price increase that’s scheduled for February 1. You should expect emails from some of the other registrars as well, since Verisign (the entity which is in charge of Dot Com as well as Dot Net) has decided to make wholesale prices go up.
Verisign is allowed to increase Dot Net prices by 10% each year, whereas with Dot Coms, they’re no longer allowed to do that. 10% per year may not seem like much but it definitely adds up. Especially if you’re a big portfolio holder.
Here’s what happened to Dot Net prices since 2012.
- 2012: from $4.65 to $5.11
- 2013: from $5.11 to $5.62
- 2014: from $5.62 to $6.18
- 2015: from $6.18 to $6.79
- 2016: from $6.79 to $$7.46
- 2017: from $7.46 to $8.20 (as of February 1)
The prices above are the so-called wholesale prices. They’re the prices registrars like GoDaddy pay Verisign (the registry) for each Dot Net registration.
If your registrar is charging less than that, it means the company in question is losing money on each registration (something that happens relatively frequently for marketing/strategic/etc. purposes).
The only Dot Net domain I own is Andrei.net, so I’ll survive 🙂
However, I imagine quite a few people aren’t exactly excited about this. For example Chinese investors who hand regged lots of low quality short Dot Net domains. This change isn’t Earth-shattering by any means but it’s definitely something that can affect your bottom line.
January 25th, 2017 at 1:51 pm
Bad idea given so many $1 GTLDs
January 25th, 2017 at 9:49 pm
Those prices don’t include the ICANN fee and payment processing Andrei. That adds a bit.
You will see a lot of .NET drops by domain investors going fwd.
January 26th, 2017 at 12:12 am
@Rob: I think the $1 new g’s might put some pressure on dot net or dot org but not as much as on dot biz, info and other legacy TLDs
@Blockchain: good point, the $8.2 is just what registrars will pay to Verisign. There are indeed other costs as well