The Public Interest Registry (PIR), governing the .ORG top level domain has declared that the price of a name registration in that domain zone will increase. The former wholesale price of $9.93 for registrar companies is to grow to $11, which will naturally affect the price to be paid by the registrants.
Any price rise is hardly good news, but the situation with .ORG deserves special consideration. Way back in 2019 ICANN renewed its contract with PIR removing the price restrictions provision from the document. And if earlier the registry was not allowed to increase the price by more than 10 percent a year, under the new contract it felt free to raise it as it liked. And mere several months later the Internet Society, an international non-profit organization including Public Interest Registry, announced its intention to sell the registry to the private company Ethos.
This would definitely open the door to uncontrolled price hikes in the domain zone, which is traditionally considered to be mainly intended for nonprofit organizations. Following numerous protests from members of the domain community, the California Attorney General’s Office got interested in the situation, and the transaction was blocked. Eventually, the .ORG domain prices have remained unchanged for 10 years, since 2016. During this period, the world went through the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting surge in the popularity (and prices) of domain names, and yet another wave of inflation. And even if the PIR registry had raised prices by 10 percent a year, as it was stated in the previous contract, .ORG domain names would have cost about $20 today.
However, it did not happen. And the current increase may well be considered justified. And even mild – reporting this news the Domain Name Wire notes that $11 today are approximately equivalent to $8.5 in 2016 – the year when .ORG prices were last raised. Meanwhile, PIR has already underscored that the registry has no plans to further increase the prices.
