| Hi Allen, |
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What’s Happening
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ICANN, the organization
that oversees domain names, has proposed
removing price caps on all .org,
.info, and .biz top level domains.
This change could significantly increase
the wholesale price that Namecheap pays
for domains, and would force us to pass
along those increases to you.
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Who Sets the
Prices
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Wholesale registries
charge Namecheap a set fee per domain
name per year. Namecheap then adds a
little markup to cover things like
support, provisioning domain services,
transaction fees, etc. ICANN includes a
provision in its contracts with
registries that limits what they can
charge.
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Why ICANN is Doing
This
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ICANN’s current contract
with Public Interest Registry (PIR), the
group that runs the .org domain name,
allows PIR to increase the wholesale
price of .org domains by 10% a year. Now
ICANN is proposing extending the
contract to operate .org but letting
PIR set whatever prices it wants.
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Rather than a 10% increase
to renew your domain next year, PIR
could suddenly start charging registrars
like Namecheap 100 times as much. In
turn, registrars would have no choice
but to pass these charges on to
customers. Similar contract proposals
may also impact .info and .biz prices.
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Speak Up Against
the Change
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