Get ready to pay more for .com domains starting in September.
Verisign today announced that it will raise prices on .com domains again this year. Prices will increase from today’s wholesale price of $8.39 to $8.97 on September 1, 2022. (Registrars add their own markup to this fee.) That’s a 7% increase, the maximum allowable under a contract with ICANN that is approved by the U.S. government.
For years, the wholesale price of .com domains was frozen at $7.85 after the Obama administration nixed annual price hikes. But under the Trump administration, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration granted Verisign the right to increase prices 7% per year for the last four years of each six-year contract extension. This will be the second price hike under the current contract, so you can expect prices to increase 7% again in 2023 and 2024, too.
Verisign struck its deal with the government before inflation hit 7%. I imagine that if this inflation level doesn’t end up being transitory, we can expect the company to ask for bigger price increases.
