Effective July, 1, 2010, VeriSign Inc., the TLD registrar, will be raising the registry fee it charges to its service providers, as per its agreement with ICANN. VeriSign provides domain registry to companies such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions.
Although the rise in pricing is minor (approximately 7% for .com and 10% for .net), it will be felt by everyone that has a presence on the internet. Nearly 100 million domains are registered with the .com extension. And although it may seem like only new domain registries are affected by the increase, it must be noted that at some point these 100 million active domains will need to be renewed.
With this is mind, it’s important for businesses to plan ahead to minimize the affect of the domain increases. If you already own a domain (or in our case several), you may want to think about renewing it early and for longer which will save money in the long run. If you’ve been considering purchasing a domain and starting a website, now may be just the right time. The cost of doing internet business will only continue to grow.