.Com price hike delayed.
Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN), the registry for .com and .net domain names, announced today that it has extended its price freeze on .net and .com domain names through March 31, 2021.
The registry instituted the freeze on prices it charges registrars in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While the company generally raises .net prices every year, this the first year since 2012 that it is able to raise prices on .com domains. It has until October of 2021 to institute its first price increase and it must give a six-month notice to registrars. You can expect the registry to announce a price hike no later than April 2021. [Update: Verisign confirmed that it will increase prices prior to the one-year mark.]
The announcement came as part of Verisign’s second quarter earnings. Echoing what many domain registrars are seeing, new registrations of .com and .net domains spiked in Q2 as the world went virtual. New registrations were 11.1 million, compared to 10.3 million in the same quarter of 2019.
Revenue was $314 million and net income was $152 million.
Why are new gTLD prices higher than .com’s? Is ICANN failing? Wasn’t the point of new gTLDs to introduce competition? When does premium pricing come to the .com drops?