Why Are Inc Domains So Expensive

Fighting Against The Price Increases

Namecheap published a post saying they are leading the fight to keep prices on .com from soaring in the next few years.

Hereââ¬â¢s the price increase plan, as stated in the Namecheap post:

ââ¬ÃVerisign 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 ââ¬Ãfreezeââ¬ï¿½, Verisign can increase prices by 7% annually during 2026-2029, then another two year ââ¬Ãfreezeââ¬ï¿½. This cycle will continue, meaning that within 10 years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current wholesale price of $7.85 ââ¬â and the sky is the limit.ââ¬ï¿½

Domain Name Cost: Quick Overview

Every website owner will need to factor domain name cost into their budget. You have the choice of either registering a new domain name, or purchasing one thats already been registered. A new domain will cost around $10-20/year, while the price of a preregistered domain will be more expensive, and vary depending on popularity.

Dont Forget The Extra Costs

Its easy to focus so much on purchasing a domain name that you forget about the additional costs associated with it.

Obviously, a domain name is not a one-off purchase, it needs to be renewed every year, which will generally cost you the same amount of money that you paid to get it .

However, then there are also various add-ons that you can buy, the most popular of which is privacy protection that ensures that your personal or business details dont come up when people look up your domain name.

Generally, these extra costs dont add up too much but its still something that you should keep in mind.

Read Also: How To Search Domain Name

How Much Does A Domain Name Cost

To buy a domain name, youll have to purchase through a domain name registrar. Registrars are simply companies that manage the reservation of domain names. Upfront and add-on prices vary between registrars, but well break down the costs to look out for, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of potential registrars.

Wondering which registrars are worth your time?

The two most common types of domains aretop-level domains and country code top-level domains . TLDs are well-known domain name extensions, like .com, .net, and .edu. ccTLDs are country-specific domain name extensions, such as .uk or .fr.

TLDs are trustworthy because theyre all so well-known when people cant remember a URL, theyre almost four times more likely to assume it ends in .com than anything else.

Meanwhile, ccTLDs are trustworthy because they imply that a site has national legitimacy. Some ccTLDs, like .me and .tv are bought and used for purposes totally unrelated to the corresponding country. In fact, the popular .co extension typically associated with business is actually a ccTLD for Colombia!

So how much does a domain name cost per year, broken down? TLDs and ccTLDs are similarly priced, butthose prices will vary depending on the registrar you use. Weve gathered the introductory prices of popular TLDs and ccTLDs below, and organized them by registrar:

Also Check: How To Make A Domain

Domain Name Cost: Final Thoughts

The simple answer to how much is a domain name is: it depends on your needs. Registering a new domain should never break the bank, though prices will increase after the first year. But if you need an aftermarket domain, be prepared to pay a lot more. In any case, privacy protection, domain transferring, and auto-renewal shouldnt add much, if anything, to the cost of your domain name.

Generally, the cost of a brand new domain name will be between $10-20 a year, which will fluctuate depending on introductory and renewal prices.

Choosing a registrar also depends on what youre looking for whether thats simply a registrar, a hosting provider included, or a registration with a website builder, there are options for every commitment level.

Also Check: How To Buy A Domain Name When It Expires

What Is A Premium Domain And Is It Worth Getting One

You have come up with a great new idea for a website and you only need a good domain name? A quick check on a WHOIS lookup website shows that the domain is available, but you see a price of $500 or even $5000 when you try to register it? You can get a new .com domain for as low as $8.38, so how come the one you want is so expensive? You have most probably come across a premium domain name. Below, we answer some of the most common questions regarding these domains.

We discussed this in-depth in our How to Select the Best Domain Registrar article.

Here are the most important things that you should look for:

• Low pricing. You dont want to spend more money than you have to. Fortunately, the competition in this industry is fierce, so all major companies offer affordable pricing.

• Free WHOIS protection. People can look up the details of any domain name and find out who owns it. This might present privacy issues. Its best to use WHOIS protection which prevents snoopers from seeing this information.

• Auto-renewals. If you dont renew a domain name it eventually goes back on the market. This might cause serious problems if some enterprising individual snatches your domain name and then offers to sell it back to you for a substantial amount of money. Thats why its best to go with a domain registrar that automatically renews your domain name.

Also, if a domain registrar is not transparent about their pricing, you should see that as a red flag and stay away.

What Is Your Domain Name Worth

Now that you know what domain names can potentially sell for, I bet youre wondering what your domain name is worth. Check out NameBio.com you can search by a specific domain or word and use various filters to find sold domains closely related to the one youre thinking of selling. You can also check GoDaddys domain valuation tool to get an idea of the resale value of your domains.

If you are thinking about buying a domain name and selling it for more money, GoDaddy Auctions is a great place to find domains that might have good resale value. As with any other purchase, its always best to start slow and do your homework before spending your hard earned money and time looking for the next big domain sale.

Start your search today.

Dont Miss: Who Owns Domain Name Checker

Also Check: How To Transfer A Domain From Google

Is Com Or Co Better

While its possible to rank well for a . co address with good search engine optimization , youll never outrank the same domain name at a .com address. co vs .com SEO isnt as thorough. This legacy .com domain name extension is better overall for business and marketing purposes because its just more familiar.

Also Check: Vistaprint Domain Transfer

Pick The Right Tld For Your Domain Name

Your TLD affects your credibility, so its important to choose wisely.

Check out this graph on the topic:

These are the extensions that you should consider if you are serving a global audience.

Of course, .com domain names are much more expensive than the rest, so you might have to compromise there if you dont have the budget for it.

Also Check: How To Make My Domain Secure

Where Should You Buy Your Exclusive Domain Name

It is important to determine the right way to acquire a valuable domain. You can either get it from a registry or an individual who already owns the domain name.

Brandnic is a

Buying a domain name from an individual owner does demand a carefully thought-out strategy. There are many mistakes that can be made when buying a premium domain, such as revealing your identity.

Brandnic Marketplace for your brand names.

A better approach would be to either purchase your domain through a domain registrar or via a domain supermarket that exclusively sells attractive domain names. However, another alternative that many consider is to buy a domain along with their hosting. Your web hosts are also a staunch provider of domain names. You can seek their assistance to find the best luxury domain name for your business. The trouble with this particular approach is that it can lead to complexities if you become unhappy with your hosting.

When you decide to switch your user, you would want to switch from the domain name, as well as it is provided by the web hosts. Switching from domain names will affect your brand image and make you less professional in the market. By keeping your domains entirely separate, you make your life far easier should you ever need to change your hosting provider. It is important to always keep your domain names from web hosts as you would not want to compromise on your credibility.

Appeals To Global Audience

In the last years, more and more businesses wanted to focus on a global audience. All these brands acquired a .com domain and probably because of the budgets they had, they invested in good ones.

If you notice carefully most of the big brands use .com for their main site. I did also my own test on a google sheet and downloaded the 1000 most successful sites by traffic. What I found out is that 72% use a .com domain!

Dropbox and Facebook even invested more money for a better .com domain. The first domain of dropbox was getdropbox.com and Facebooks first domain was thefacebook.com.

Dont Miss: Who Owns Domain Name Checker

Also Check: Can You Use Your Own Domain Name With Shopify

Who Sets The Price

First, lets back up and take a look at who actually sets the prices for domain names in general

You purchase domain names through a registrar like Namecheap, but registrars get their TLDs supplied by registries. These are the ones who actually control each TLD. So just like a standard store or shop, the registry sets the price and the registrar adds its markup.

So far so standard. And while its important to understand the background context, it doesnt explain why registries set the wholesale prices of some TLDs so high.

On The Falsehood That A Domain Name Is Just One Line In A Database

This is seen over and over and is a gross over simplification. It is a purely technically view on something that is not only technical.

And even on the technical aspect, it is wrong.

It probably comes from the fact that some people have seen that having a local TLD or domain name is as simple as starting a bind or nsd instance and setting up a zonefile. This is indeed very cheap.

But that is not similar in any way to running a real TLD.

For gTLDs:

So in summary for gTLDs there is a “baseline”, a set of regulations and hence prices that will be paid similarly by all registries , but after that each registry is typically a corporation that is free to choose its pricing model, if it wants to have its “domain name” business line profitable by itself or if the costs are subsumed by other activities. Note also that many new gTLDs in 2012 are in fact “brand TLDs” which means often defensive registrations by trademarks owners, and those TLDs would not even be open to registrations and hence can never be profitable just by themselves as they do not create any income stream of money.

For ccTLDs:

Registries have to handle registrars in the same way, so a registry price will not vary among registrars .

Of course, you also have to take into account various trivial costs that may not be trivial in amount:

Don’t Miss: How To Change Domain On Shopify

Why Do Domain Names Cost Money

A usual question about domain names is why do we need to pay for them. I had the same question when I first started building websites.

So, Why do domain names cost money? Domain names cost money because we pay for the expenses and profits of 3 different entities: Government or non-profit organizations that regulate the Industry, registries , and registrars .

How Much Should I Pay For A Domain Name

If you are planning to build a website quickly after registering your domain name, the best thing you can do so you can get the cheapest price possible is to register the domain with your hosting provider . The usual case is that hosting providers offer a free domain when you choose to purchase hosting too. Read that post for more: buy domain and hosting.

If you are going to purchase many domains then you need to consider also the renewal prices too and what options each registrar has to offer. For some registrars, there are memberships that offer good discounts for those that buy domains in bulk.

Read Also: How Do You Set Up A Domain

Your Domain Name Should Be Easy To Remember

You want to make sure that your domain name is easy to remember. But what exactly does that mean?

Basically, the more items you ask someone to remember, the harder it is for them to do that.

When it comes to domain names, every word and symbol is a separate item, which is something to keep in mind when you are considering various options.

For example, www.luciddreaming.com is easier to remember than www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com .

Try to keep your domain short, avoid using symbols, and get a well-known extension.

Read Also: How To Transfer Domain From Wix To Shopify

So Why Do Domain Names Cost Money

Why are domain name renewals so expensive. You have got to be kidding me. Hopefully the post above has given you a better understanding of the importance of renewing your domain names on time and the general costs that you ll incur. They know that you need to renew your domain name every year so they can recoup some of the original discounts.

They seem to be the absolute most expensive domain registrar besides those spammy ones that try to trick people into spending 69 99 year. Domains offered for resale by owners for a premium price. Domain names cost money because we pay for the expenses and profits of 3 different entities.

Plus icann fees i ve been transferring my domains to other companies for years now but this is the last straw. Icann registries wholesalers and registrars retailers. Why domain renewals are so expensive.

Some domain name registrars even offer an automatic renewal so you ll never run the risk of your domain name expiring and falling into the wrong hands. For example if you buy a domain at a premium price of 120 usd you can add multiple years or renew at the regular price of 12 usd per year. When purchased my domain name it cost only 8 99.

You purchase domain names at a domain name retailer like namecheap. I thought that was fair but now when it comes time for renewal it s going to cost me 20 99. I had a ws domain name come up for renewal the other day with godaddy and they were asking 39 to renew it.

How To Choose A Great Domain Name For A Website

Also Check: How Much To Purchase A Domain

The Top 25 Most Expensive Domain Names

This post was originally published on July 24, 2017, and was updated on July 14, 2022.

When most people think about the price of a domain, somewhere in the range of $15 usually pops up. But often, domain names sell for much more than that.

The average price of a domain name sold in the secondary market buying a domain from someone who already owns it is in the thousands of dollars.

It is not unusual to see public domain sales reported weekly in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and often enough there will be domain sales reported in the millions. You can check out dnjournal.com for weekly domain sales reporting, as well as annual historical sales reports. 2022 is off to a strong start, with the domain unlock.com selling at $1,228,200. Its always good to use this report to see current sales and trends.

Nailing down the most expensive domain names isnt easy most of the parties involved often try to keep that information private. There are various reasons for this practice, ranging from wanting to keep their competition in the dark to not wanting others to know how much theyre willing to spend on a domain in the future.

Its a pretty common assertion that the vast majority of high-value domain sales are done with some sort of non-disclosure agreement in place. Luckily for us, enough sales are public, so we can still have a good idea of the domain market and its health over the years.

Icann Doesn’t Register Domain Names

Your question assumes that the amount ICANN charges is a ‘registration fee’ and that you can register “directly from ICANN” – which is simply not true.

Think of it as a small tax – for each TLD there is a registry that handles the actual registration, but to support the top-level infrastructure , each registry pays some amount to ICANN. To make it “fair”, it’s calculated in proportion to the domain names they have, and it seems that it comes out to $0.18 per domain.

That $0.18 doesn’t in any way relate to the cost or price of registration – it’s a small “infrastructure fee” for the “umbrella organization” that’s included in the total cost.

Why do some top level domains cost considerably less than others?

Top level domains such as .com, .net and .biz have fixed wholesale prices negotiated between the registry and the non-profile Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers , which is kinda like a domain regulator

The pricing of older generation TLD domains have a limit what they can be sold for and this limit is set by ICANN which is why some domains hardly ever move in price. However it should be noted that this cap does not include already purchased domains that you often see at auction for thousands of dollars.on.

Newer gTLD’s domains such as .club, .sexy and .security have no ICANN limitations on how much a wholesaler can charge, this also applies to two letter country domains such as .us and .ca.

Whom are these Domain Wholesalers?

Where does my money go?

Recommended Reading: How To Improve My Domain Authority