On January 3, 2020, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced major changes to the contract they have with Verisign.  ICANN and Verisign made these changes without consulting or incorporating feedback from the ICANN community or internet users.  (ICANN typically is said to operate in this fashion).  

Domain names, (.com’s mainly) saw increases in 2020, 2021, 2022 (effective September 1, 2022), and again in 2023. There will be a price freeze for 2 years then the pricing can continue increasing in 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029, with another 2-year freeze.  

There is a possibility of more expenses or higher increases as the contract gives a bit of a free for all in how pricing is set, allowing for monopolies and many other self-serving business options.  

Domain names are expected to increase exponentially from what they are now to where they will be in 2029.  We don’t know yet what price increases will be passed on to ultimately you, the business owner.  

We recommend you lock in your domain names now, if you can financially afford it, renew them for as many years as you can, up to 10 years.  That will help your bottom line for a bit. The 2022 price change takes effect on September 1, 2022.

Key points:

There is a price cap on .com domain names only (see above).  The other top-level domain names do not have a price cap, so .org and similar domain names can be raised as much as ICANN deems it feels it would like to.

New .com domain names will cost more.

Renewals will raise in pricing each year, except from 2026 to 2029, so plan accordingly.

At Simply Web Services, we do not mark our domain name pricing up, we pass on to our clients the same cost that we pay for a domain name. If there is another TLD (Top Level Domain) that you are interested in, please let us know and will tell you if we can register it and how much it will cost.