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Comment by jasonbarone | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know how the “premium” renewal prices are set and governed? I’m going through this right now with .app domains (also owned by Google). Apparently domains categorized as “premium” have a much higher yearly pricing, and how it’s priced is not specified anywhere on the registry website. I called a few registrars and they said that the premium pricing is set by the registry. What’s concerning is that the registrars admitted that there really isn’t anything stopping the registry from increasing the premium pricing at will.

Anyone have anymore info about this? Seems concerning that a registry has no restrictions on what they can do with pricing after an individual has invested into an expensive domain.

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AFAIU, the ICANN New gTLD registry agreement means you can't have "premium" prices for renewals:

"Registry Operator must have uniform pricing for renewals of domain name registrations (“Renewal Pricing”). For the purposes of determining Renewal Pricing, the price for each domain registration renewal must be identical to the price of all other domain name registration renewals in place at the time of such renewal, and such price must take into account universal application of any refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying or other programs in place at the time of renewal."

REGISTRY AGREEMENT - 2.10 (b)

https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/agreements/ag...

Hmm, this definitely isn't the case for .app. There are numerous tiers of pricing as of right now. Google categorized specific names as "Premium", which you can see when searching for a lot of .app domains. These Premium domains vary in both initial purchase price AND the yearly renewal. One of my examples is in this thread. Purchase price was around $1000, yearly renewal is $280. Other names are even higher...

Ah, yes, the (c) clause says they can charge you more if you agreed to it "at the time of the initial registration", but not after you have invested in the domain.

But I suggest people read the whole article themselves, I have no industry expertise.

Premium names are common across the domain industry. Different registries handle them differently (some have an up-front cost whereas others like us use annually recurring), but the registrar you're using should be making it very clear what costs you're signing up for during the registration flow.

Are you saying the registry can arbitrarily change the .app domain renewal price without control, or that they can charge a different renewal price for different .app domains?

I've experienced weird price fluctuations with .io domain renewals in the past, but haven't owned one in a few years.

According to registrars, yes. So for example, let's say I paid $1000 for a premium .app last year when they were released. Renewal price is marked for something like $280/yr, which I didn't expect, because I thought the premium pricing was an initial purchase price only. I thought the renewal price was standard .app renewal rates.

When I called to clarify with a few registrars, they said that this premium price ($280) is specified by the registry (Google), and that there's no guarantee that pricing will stay at $280. I used a hypothetical, and asked them if it were possible for Google to raise the price to something like $1000/yr or $10k/yr, and they confirmed that there is technically nothing stopping the registry from doing so.

Yikes! My one was and still is $63.70/year. I wonder what makes a domain "premium" anyway, and what makes it more or less premium? Never even seen a live .app domain anyway so that sort of makes them not premium at all.

One criteria I've seen used to price domains as "premium" is shorter names and popular dictionary words. Not sure if this is consistent across registrars, but I would think "premium-ness" is established at the registry level.

It's unclear to me if premium-ness is a function of time, and/or if there's an objective formulaic criteria here.

What registrar did you use? They should have made it very clear during the checkout flow what the annually recurring charge was. Can you try it again now with persona.app (another premium) and post a screenshot of what exactly they're displaying?

.io is a ccTLD. They aren't bound by the same kinds of rules that gTLD operators are.

I'm unsure how it is determined but when I asked my .app registrar they said it should be $120/year for each renewal, which was less than I paid to register it. Guess I'll find out.

I believe in the original .app launch thread on HN they stated that premium domain pricing was based on machine learning. So...who knows.

On my so far unused premium .app it is the same as the initial price but who knows what happens if I put something successful on it.

You could try transferring your domain to another registrar if you feel like you're getting gouged

I think the pricing is up to the registry and not the registrar. There is only one registry per TLD.

The renewal price is the same at any registrar, the pricing comes from the registry.

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