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Ask HN: What chance is there of a TLD raising prices significantly?

2 points by flyGuyOnTheSly ↗ HN
I am looking to purchase some .yoga tld domains, and I am nervous about building a business on a domain tld that has dynamic pricing.

Most every .yoga domain on namesilo costs $23.99 USD/year... but some of them like natural.yoga cost $5,000+/year

Is there anything in the ICANN contract preventing whoever owns the .yoga tld from saying "hey I think I want to increase flyGuyOnTheSly.yoga from $23.99/year to $10,000/year renewal fee because that is a popular domain"???

Essentially rent seeking on my hard work that made a "worthless domain" in their eyes "now popular"?

Thank you

2 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 11.9 ms ] thread
nicksantamaria
I asked donuts (gTLD owner of .family) whether my domain renewal could be reduced (from $385 per year to something more reasonable for a genealogy hobby). This was their response.

Maybe it’s not worth reading too much into the “we can’t change the renewal cost” line.

—-

Hi Nick,

Unfortunately, we can't change the renewal cost for santamaria.family

If we ever start to change renewals, I will be sure to reach out to help.

Sorry about that.

[redacted]

Domain Consultant, Donuts Inc.

flyGuyOnTheSly
Well that is definitely something.

I reached out to namesilo as well, and while they could not confirm whether or not it was possible, they admit that it would be extremely unorthodox and unprecedented.

And just thinking game theory here...

Raising prices significantly like that would be signing their own death sentence.

Nobody would buy a .yoga domain if they knew the owners were self dealing like that.