Registrars Increasing Prices More Than the Verisign Price Increase

One of my biggest pet peeves is being nickeled and dimed. It’s usually not that I can’t afford to pay a tiny bit more for something, but it’s annoying to pay more than I should be paying.

Yesterday at midnight, Verisign increased .com and .net domain prices by 7%. The wholesale cost for .com domain names increased from $7.34 to $7.85. Obviously domain registrars are going to pass this price increase along to customers, but one would assume they’ve already got the profit margin they want, so the price we pay should correspondingly increase by 7%.

At least that is what I thought would happen.

It seems that some domain registrars are increasing prices by more than the 7% increase that was passed on to them. One registrar I use increased my prices by 12.5% and another by about 10%. I would imagine other companies are doing the same to their customers.

Perhaps this is standard across the board, but it’s annoying. My portfolio only has about 500 domain names at any given time, so an increase isn’t going to cause me any issues, but it’s an annoyance, and I am sure there are people who will be impacted by this.

It doesn’t sit right for me that domain registrars are using the Verisign price increase as a way to pad their margins. Have you noticed the same thing?

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

23 COMMENTS

  1. Fabulous.com is generally pretty good for keeping prices very low for domainers. I have all my domains there for last few years.

    I am not sure how much they have increased, haven’t checked yet.

  2. GoDaddy got the jump on the price increase. I am a Domain Buyer Club member and renewed 14 names last night at 11:06 EST and they charged me $8.47 when on Jan 2, 2012 I paid $7.87 total for 9 names renewed. This is not the price I was promised when I bought the Domain Buyer Club. Their cost increased .51 and they raised my cost $1.

  3. @ Dimester

    Although it would appear the change was 54 minutes earlier than it should have been from what I read, the price change from $7.87 to $8.47 is in line with the Verisign price increase.

  4. Using a coupon code and my Good as Gold account at Godaddy, I just renewed 2 domains today for 2 years apiece for a total of $32.02. That is roughly $8 per name per year.

  5. Hey, if you cannot afford the 8$/yr, then you better let your domains drop.

    I like to see domain reg and renewal fees go high $20/yr so the weak will be left off

    Soon- this will be a rich man game.

  6. Like almost any other area of life, the more money you have, the better off you are in domaining.

    I finally switched from SedoPro to Frank Schilling’s parking service and have been realizing more than double the parking revenue. The rich definitely have it better.

  7. @ Joe

    I would imagine most portfolio holders with that many names own their own registrars, so they are not subject to being at the whim of domain registrars when it comes to pricing. They would face the same Verisign price increase of course, but it would only be 7%.

  8. @Elliot

    Yes, some of them (like Frank Schilling) have their own registrar, but others do not. As far as I know, for example, Michael Berkens doesn’t own one, does he?

  9. You guys were given the opportunity to renew your domains 100 years in advance through NetSol prior to the price increase. Sorry you missed out. 🙂

  10. @Tony

    That’s correct, TheDomains.com is registered at NameVault which, AFAIK, is not MHB’s. And, with 75,000+ names, it’s going to be a significant expense for his company.

  11. OnlyDomains.com is not increasing their price despite the Verisign price increase. In fact they are dropping prices between 1 Feb through to 31 March if you have a coupon code – then its back up to regular price of $8.90. Not everyone takes advantage of the price increase. There are some good registrars out there who actually value long term relationships with their customers.

  12. @Abdu: It was nice meeting you at DFG.

    I would assume NetSol keeps on renewing your domain – as the maximum renewal the COM/NET registry allows is 10 years. Hope the new owners (web.com) know about that too 😉

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