ICANN, the group that is responsible for overseeing top-level internet domains, is close to granting approval for the first series of price hikes in 8 years.
.com domain prices have been steady at $7.85 (R116.62) since 2012; this may not be the price at which you paid for your domain because your registrar would buy it from ICANN and resell it to you. The proposed increase will push the price up to nearly $13.50 (R200.56)
ICANN, however, is not responsible for the price increase. It comes from an agreement Verisign reached with the Commerce Department, which has some oversight of .com domains. ICANN’s CEO, Göran Marby, addressed in a blog post that ICANN “is not a price regulator and defers to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Justice for the regulation of pricing for .COM registry services.”
The US government agreement justifies the price increases by saying that new top-level domains like .club and .shop and “the use of social media” have made the domain name market “more dynamic.”
