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This year's international domain price hike

/ Domains
Our least favourite annual event strikes again, as our provider of .com and other international domains raises prices.

Updated, 4 September: We have reduced the increases on a range of domains, and updated the new prices in the table below.

In a trend that goes back at least to 2019, today we are reluctantly confirming that prices for non-.nz domains are about to go up.

As is more or less traditional, our upstream provider has decided to increase the wholesale prices that they charge us. Especially since the US/NZ exchange rate has also moved against us recently, our only practical option is to pass the increase on.

New domain prices, effective 1 September 2023

All renewals and new domain registrations from 1 September 2023 will happen under these new prices:

TLD

1+

20+

50+

100+

250+

500+

1000+

.com

$36
$35

$32
$29

$29
$25.50

$28
$24.50

$26
$23.50

$25
$22.50

$23
$20

.net
.org

$37
$35

$34
$32

$33
$31

$32
$30

$31
$29

$30
$28

$29
$27

*.au

$36
$35

$32
$29

$29
$25.50

$28
$24.50

$26
$23.50

$25
$22.50

$23
$20

.biz

$40
$35

$40
$35

$40
$35

$40
$35

$40
$35

$40
$35

$40
$35

.co

$80
$58

$80
$58

$80
$58

$80
$58

$80
$58

$80
$58

$80
$58

There is no change to .nz prices.

Other TLDs are affected. From 1 September you'll be able to log in and see full domain pricing in our Control Panel.

What's causing the upward drift?

We looked into this question last year, and there were two main forces pushing prices up:

ICANN once meaningfully limited what registrars could charge for domains, but for a few years now they've been loosening the ropes. That’s deregulation. Theoretically, with a large number of different registries offering similar products, competition between providers would shine through. In practice there are fewer domain name registries and registrars than it appears because of mergers and acquisitions. That’s market concentration.

Both of these trends are as strong as ever. You can be assured that we're working to be more than just a price-taker, and that we should have some more news on that front soon.

Until then, the best advice we can give you is to lock in domain prices with multi-year terms, and to choose TLDs carefully, with an eye on market forces an future prices.

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