Prices keep going up.
Verisign (VRSN) announced yesterday that it is increasing the price of .net domain names by 10% on February 1, 2018. The wholesale price of a one-year registration or renewal will jump from $8.20 to $9.02 on that day.
The move doesn’t come as a surprise. Verisign increases the prices 10% every year and has the contractual right to do so under through 2023 under its recently-renewed contract. This means the wholesale price of a .net registration could be $14.52 in 2023.
By comparison, the wholesale price of a .com domain is $7.85. That price is set in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Verisign can’t increase it without facing an additional cost burden and getting approval from the Department of Commerce. It’s possible that the implementation of thick whois in .com could be an impetus for a price increase. However, thick whois might be delayed due to European privacy issues.
[Note: the original version of this article had a typo in the second paragraph that stated .com registration could be $14.52 in 2023, rather than .net. As noted in the final paragraph, the .com price is fixed at $7.85.]
I’m new to this. What does wholesale pricing for a domain mean? Bulk purchases? and at what level?
Thanks
A wholesale price is how much the registry (e.g. Verisign) charges the registrar (e.g. GoDaddy). Registrars then charge a mark-up on the domain, which represents their gross profit.
In general, you won’t find a registrar selling a domain for less than the wholesale cost unless they have a short-term rebate deal with the registry or if they are trying to win over business, usually in the form of domain transfers.
The only Reason someone ever bought .net is because they could not get the .com
Since the new gtld arrive there is better alternatives and nobody is starting a new website on .net
So after they tried to lower the price and it didn’t work…
they came to a conclusion they just need to milk the cow while they can, because the website owners must renew
.net is the only tld that going down 3 years in a raw