Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

.shop pricing sunrise renewals at $1,000

Kevin Murphy, June 13, 2016, 10:54:36 (UTC), Domain Registries

If you’ve spent over $40 million on a gTLD, you need to make your money back somehow, right?
It’s emerged that GMO Registry, which paid ICANN a record $41.5 million for .shop back in January, plans to charge $1,000 renewal fees, wholesale, on domains registered during its upcoming sunrise period.
Trademark owners will seemingly have to pay over the odds for domains matching their trademarks, while regular registrants will have a much more manageable annual fee of $24.
The prices were disclosed in a blog post from the registrar OpenProvider last week, in which the company urged GMO to lower its prices.
Sunrise is due to start June 30, running for 60 days, so there’s still a chance prices could change before then.
It’s not the first registry to charge more for sunrise renewals than regular renewals.
Any company that bought a .sucks domain during sunrise was lumbered with a recurring $2,499 registry fee.
.green also had a $50 annual sunrise renewal premium before Afilias took over the gTLD in April.
Others have charged higher non-recurring sunrise fees. With .cars, the sunrise fee was $3,000, which was $1,000 more than the regular GA price.

Tagged: , , , ,

Comments (3)

  1. Rubens Kuhl says:

    In one city TLD sunrise, the sunrise price was 10x the GA price. With a grand total of 12 sunrise registrations, it added to 40% of what ICANN charged the registry in TMCH fees… if it were to be 50x instead of 10x, then it would have not been a loss, so I don’t blame any registry charging initial sunrise fees in that range.

  2. A minute ago the registry sent an e-mail to its registrars notifying them about a change in Sunrise renewal fees: “Domain names registered during Sunrise will now renew at the standard renewal fee of USD 24.
    We understand that implementing price changes creates more work for our registrar partners and we apologize for the uncertainty around .shop Sunrise pricing.
    After feedback and consultation with registrars and trademark holders it was decided that revising the sunrise renewal fee was important for the long term health and growth of the .shop TLD.
    We ask for your understanding and cooperation and hope that you will support the .shop Sunrise.
    Registrars who have already executed an RRA will receive a separate legal notice of the change.
    The revised pricing is also reflected in the attached documentation.”

  3. L400 says:

    the registry fee for http://www.fashion.shop and http://www.christmas.shop is even 33k !!!

Add Your Comment