Let ICANN Know if You Support .Com Price Hikes

ICANN is the organization in charge of the domain name system. Its staff wants to increase .COM prices by 30% over the next four years. Use this tool to quickly and easily share your opinion about the price increase with ICANN.

Verisign is the sole-source supplier of .com domain names at the wholesale level, giving them an effective monopoly. When you register or renew a domain name through your registrar, such as NameBright, GoDaddy, or NetworkSolutions, $7.85 of your registration or renewal payment goes to Verisign. The actual cost to Verisign to provide the expensive infrastructure and the management of the registry has been estimated at between $2.50 to $2.90 per domain name per year. Other registries have said they can offer the same services for cheaper.

ICANN has given Verisign the perpetual right to operate the .com registry, meaning that it does not have to compete with other registries on price to win the right to continue its control of .com. Any price increases are passed along to customers. ICANN staff has determined that permitting ICANN to raise prices on .com domain names by 7% per year from $7.85 to $10.26 per year after four years is justified.

ICANN is supposed to act in the public interest, and be responsive to public comment. ICANN is currently accepting Public Comments on the Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement with VeriSign. This comment period is your opportunity to share your views with ICANN, whether you think the price increases are justified or unjustified. You can learn more about the issue here, here and here.

This form takes less than 30 seconds – share your concerns now!

.COM Price Increase – Public Comment Submit Tool

This Public Comment Submission Tool is intended to assist the public with submitting a Public Comment to ICANN in a user-friendly manner. Although the Tool was created and hosted by the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), everyone is free to use it regardless of your point of view on this important issue.

How to Use the Public Comment Tool

Fill out the form below, at the bottom click Create Email and your own email editor will open a pre-filled out comment for you to submit. You can add your own comments to the email in your own email editor.

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