Fee increases will hit drop-catching companies the most.
ICANN-accredited domain name registrars have voted to increase the amount of money they pay ICANN each year.
In October, ICANN announced plans to increase costs on registries and registrars.
One part of the fee increase required a vote: registrars accounting for payment of two-thirds of all registrar-level fees had to approve an increase of the annual variable fee.
This fee, divided between all registrars, was $3.42 million. The registrars agreed to increase this to $3.8 million.
ICANN pitched the variable fee increase as a rollback of pricing. It gave a 10% discount on previous fees to incentivize registrars to adopt the 2009 Registrar Accreditation Agreement. That discount remained until now.
The fees hit dropcatching registrars such as DropCatch.com and Gname the hardest, since they have hundreds of accreditations. They receive a 2/3rds discount for these small registrars, but it still adds up.
Other price increases didn’t require a vote.
Registries now pay a quarterly fixed fee of $6,450, an increase of $200, and the per-domain transaction fee has increased to $0.258 from $0.25.
Registrars must also pay a $0.20 transaction fee, up from $0.18. This fee increase, which is typically added as a line item when customers register or renew domains, increased this month.
The article has been updated to reflect that dropcatching registrars receive a 2/3rds discount, which applies to all registrars with fewer than 350,000 domains.
Interesting development. Curious to see how this impacts pricing for end users and whether it leads to any improvements in service or transparency from registrars.