The world's leading domain registrar, GoDaddy, has announced a price increase for the registration and renewal of .COM domain names. This step did not come as a surprise: as is known, Verisign, which manages the .COM domain extension, will raise prices on September 1. The wholesale price for registrars will be $8.39. Naturally, GoDaddy simply had to put up its fees. For example, the company’s Domain Discount Club members are paying $8.29 if they want to register a domain with the .COM extension, and the registrar, of course, cannot operate at a loss.
The situation is similar with other large registrar companies with low profit margins, which make money not so much on their retail margin but on the number of names under management. No doubt, they, too, will announce price increases very soon. With regard to GoDaddy, it is already known that the Domain Discount Club members will pay $8.85 for registering a domain name with the .COM extension, not counting the extra 18 cents that are charged as a fixed percentage fee for each domain transaction and go to the ICANN budget. Thus, the final price will amount to $9.03. Reporting this news, Domain Name Wire suggests that GoDaddy customers who are registrants of .COM domain names should hurry up and renew their domain registration before the prices go up at the end of August. And for major domain investors, the resulting difference could be quite significant.
