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ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

namecheap.com

31–40 of 132 posts

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#31

"Verisign will be allowed to increase the wholesale price to registrars for .COM domains by 7% each year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. After a two year “freeze”, Verisign can increase prices by 7% annually during 2026-2029, then another two year “freeze”. This cycle will continue, meaning that within 10 years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current wholesale price of $7.85 — and the sky is t…

Let us appreciate that ICANN doesn't manage access to other public resources, like water or healthcare.

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#32

I know very little about the technical and business side of DNS and Domain Registrars. That being said, have things actually gotten more expensive for them to operate? I'm pretty confident the answer is no and these price increases just reflect the need for a handful of entities to charge more for an essential service with no viable alternative.

Dollars gotten cheaper over the years, I wonder what the price would be today if .coms increased with inflation. > meaning that within 10 years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current wholesale price of $7.85 Seems reasonable over 10y period?

No, inflation isn't 5% a year in consumer prices.

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#33
post #16

I have mixed feelings about this, the increase by ICANN is outrageous, but at the same time NameCheap are positioning themselves as heros here, and I've been burnt multiple times by the byzantine way their renewal system tries to fool you into paying for the wrong thing (put 'registration period as 10 years? suuure, we won't tell you you're paying for 10 years of privacy guard over 1 year of domain registration thoug…

> NameCheap are positioning themselves as heros here

They have a history of jumping on various issues for marketing purposes. They got a lot of there core users by going against the founder of GD and spamming reddit with anti GD comments.

If you want a good registrar with free whois privacy (that is easier to manage than NameCheaps) and better prices, go with NameSilo

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#35

"Verisign will be allowed to increase the wholesale price to registrars for .COM domains by 7% each year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. After a two year “freeze”, Verisign can increase prices by 7% annually during 2026-2029, then another two year “freeze”. This cycle will continue, meaning that within 10 years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current wholesale price of $7.85 — and the sky is t…

Absurd, especially considering domains used to be free (before 1997.) They did, on the other hand, sometimes take a month to register.

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#36
post #7

I know very little about the technical and business side of DNS and Domain Registrars. That being said, have things actually gotten more expensive for them to operate? I'm pretty confident the answer is no and these price increases just reflect the need for a handful of entities to charge more for an essential service with no viable alternative.

If anything costs should have gone down. Bandwidth is cheaper, and processing power has gone up. However, even with that DNS has been pretty distributed by design. Lowering system load at the top level to begin with. Like some country code domains are managed by a pretty small number people to begin with. So it's not like you need a large amount of staff either.

The problem is lower registration prices mean more registrations and renewals, aka squatting.

It is hard to say what direction or price point is either optimal or fair.

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#37

I know very little about the technical and business side of DNS and Domain Registrars. That being said, have things actually gotten more expensive for them to operate? I'm pretty confident the answer is no and these price increases just reflect the need for a handful of entities to charge more for an essential service with no viable alternative.

Dollars gotten cheaper over the years, I wonder what the price would be today if .coms increased with inflation. > meaning that within 10 years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current wholesale price of $7.85 Seems reasonable over 10y period?

It seems reasonable, but what about 40 years down the road. Hopefully, we’ll have moved onto something better, but I doubt it.

Re: ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money

#39
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at this (and this only works for domains, not things like hosting) is supply and demand. There's a limit to the number of domains out there, and there's a huge increase in people who want them. It's almost like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies... scarcity is built in to domains. At some point, they'll all be taken.

How would we run out of domains? Register every single 253-character string as a domain name? Sounds expensive.

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