Late last week, Verisign announced it is going to put up the wholesale price paid by registrars for registrations in the Verisign-controlled .COM domain from $7.85 to $8.39 as of September 1, 2021, Domain Name Wire reports.
Based in the United States, Verisign had a long-term agreement with the US authorities to keep .COM domain name prices at a fixed rate. However, former president Donald Trump’s administration cancelled the restriction to support free competition and business development. The decision is now included in ICANN’s current contract with Verisign. Naturally, registrants pay the rates set by registrars; still, even now many of them charge below $8.39 for wholesale .COM registrations. Therefore, the price hike will be felt by everybody. A $0.54 increase may seem irrelevant but it should be remembered that there are around 152 million domain names registered in .COM. Since the higher rate will also apply to renewals, simple arithmetic shows that the move will earn Verisign an extra $82 million in one year alone. Furthermore, the company’s contract with ICANN states that Verisign has the right to increase .COM rates by another 7 percent annually for the remaining four years of the term of the contract. This means that in four years, the wholesale registration price may hit as much as $10.26.
