Doman Registrars Raising Prices Faster Than Wholesale Increases, But Competition Means Buyers Can Still Get Good Deals

BABYLON, NY – Over the years, wholesale prices of .Com domains have increased at a steady pace, although still at a slower clip than those offered by domain registrars, who regularly bump up prices to raise their profit margins. However, a savvy consumer can still manage to snag a .Com address – the most well-known and used of all generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – if they shop around and take advantage of the high level of competition currently out there.

Reston, Virginia-based Verisign, Inc. is the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name gTLDs, and the company notes that the reason for their regular increases of .Com domain prices is due to the fact that “unregulated” domain registrars are jacking up their prices at an even faster rate, essentially setting the inflated market prices that consumers ultimately end up paying for domains.

But some experts say that while some domain registrars are indeed guilty of bumping up .Com prices, Verisign’s agreement is weakened when you look at the big picture.

In 2012, the U.S. Federal Government froze wholesale prices of .Com domains at $7.85 per year; they remained at that level until 2021, at which point prices were allowed to be increased once again on a yearly basis. For example, .Com wholesale prices jumped up to $8.39 in 2021, $8.97 in 2022, and $9.59 in 2023, and as of September 1 of this year, they are due to increase again, this time to $10.26, which will represent a 31 percent bump in wholesale prices on the part of Verisign over the course of the past four years alone.

In contrast, in 2014 GoDaddy – the world’s largest domain registrar – charged $14.99 per year for a .com domain, and the company kept this price for years, finally raising it to $17.99 in 2019, followed by $19.99 in 2022 and $21.99 in 2024.

While these jumps represent an overall 47 percent 10-year increase, GoDaddy often offers numerous incentives that reduce the cost of their domains, including locking in a $15 annual charge if you sign up for three years. Customers can also pay to join GoDaddy’s Domain Discount Club (DDC), which gives them access to domains fees that nearly mirror Verisign’s wholesale costs.

Other domain registrars – including Namecheap, Cloudflare, NameBright, Registrating and PorkBun, among many others – have similar discount programs or incentives in-place that make their .Com prices very competitive, and the one thing that all of these companies have in common is that they all must procure the domains they sell from Verisign. And as domain registrars, these companies all incur significant costs in running their businesses – such as marketing, credit card costs, chargebacks, and more – that Verisign does not, while offering numerous other services to their customers as well.

With all that being said, Verisign’s argument that registrars are pumping up their prices at a faster rate than they are – and claiming that, as a result, consumers are being negatively impacted – fails to completely hold water if you look at the details. If you, as a consumer, do some shopping around, you can take advantage of the competition amongst registrars to land the .Com domain you need for prices that approach – or even match – Verisign’s wholesale cost.