Renewals are the real cost of names you hold
A name you keep is held for years, and a sale is rare. So the renewal, times those years, is the price you really pay.
Chapter 4 of 13, 13 min read
Your renewalRenewalThe yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.Read the definition notices for the next three months have arrived, covering eighty names. You made a few sales this year, and your card will be charged name by name unless you act. Together, these notices are the price of your portfolio. You pay it every year on names that have not sold, and most never will. The purchase price you remember is the smallest part of a held name's cost.
By the end of this chapter you can put a yearly cost on your portfolio and a five-year costCost to holdWhat a name costs over five years: the first year plus four renewals.Read the definition on any name in it. You can set that cost against the sales we track for names like it, and decide whether to renew or drop on a written rule rather than a feeling. You can lock a price before an announced rise, and read every figure in Unique Domains.
What you will be able to do
- You can put a yearly cost on your portfolio and a five-year cost on any name in it.
- You can set that cost against the sales we track and say which names are a renewal bill.
- You can decide whether to renew or drop once a year, on a written rule, close to expiry.
- You can renew ahead of an announced rise and read a name's renewal in Unique Domains.
Your cost is renewals, your income is rare sales
You buy a name once, then renew it every year. Most names in a portfolio never sell, and you renew them until the day you let them go. So the price of a name is not what you paid for it. It is the renewal, multiplied by the years you hold the name. A hundred names mean a hundred renewals a year, whether one of them sells or none does.
The sell-through rateSell-through rateThe share of the names somebody holds that sell in a year. Two names sold out of a hundred held is a rate of 2%.Read the definition is the share of a portfolio that sells in a year. Andrew Allemann, on Domain Name Wire on 6 November 2014, passed on rates heard from large portfolio holders that do no outbound selling: 1% to 3% a year. Below 2%, names can take decades to sell, Allemann added on 28 July 2022.
Parking means the ads shown on the page of a name you hold. Google removed its advertisers from parking pagesParked domainA registered name that shows only ads or a for-sale page instead of a site.Read the definition, Domain Name Wire reported on 23 September 2025. AdSense for Domains was, in Allemann's words, dead. Count on little or no parking income.
So test a name before you buy it: set five renewals against what names like it sold for. On .com, the median renewal across the registrarsRegistrarThe company you buy and renew a domain through, such as Namecheap or GoDaddy. It does not own the name, it only registers it for you.Read the definition we price is $13.40, and the 12-month median of the .com sales we track is $810. On .io, the same two figures are $61.75 and $400. The median is the price of one sale, while the renewal is paid on every name.
Half the names are dropped at the first renewal
Many names are dropped at their first renewal. As Konstantinos Zournas reported on OnlineDomain on 2 October 2024, a study by CENTR covered about 700,000 names on 21 country endings, scanned in March 2023 before their renewal date. CENTR is the association of European country-code registriesRegistryThe organisation that runs an ending, like the company behind .com. It sets the rules and the price registrars pay.Read the definition, the companies that run those endings.
The study's renewal rates by age were 54.5% at the end of the first year, 79.6% by the third year, and up to 95% for names over 18 years old. Use mattered too. Names with a developed website renewed at 90.1%, and names with no web content renewed at 70.5%.
Registry premiums show a similar curve. These are names that an ending's registry priced above its standard fee. Radix, which runs .tech, .space and .fun, reported for the first half of 2026 that 51% of its premium names renewed at the first renewal, 73% at the second and 84% at the third (Domain Name Wire, 22 July 2026).
A cheap first year buys you a decision, not a name. The renewal price was the real price all along. A year after a launch or a promotion comes a wave of expiries, which the trade calls a junk dropJunk dropThe wave of expiries about a year after a new ending opens or runs a cheap promotion, when people who registered names on a whim decline to renew them.Read the definition. The case below shows one month of a junk drop, on one ending.
.my lost one name in six in a month
Case- End of August 2026
- 826,384 names
- End of September 2026
- 693,122 names
- Lost in 30 days
- 133,262, about 16%
- Added in July 2025
- a net 165,000
Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 5 October 2026 that the country ending .my had fallen from 826,384 names at the end of August to 693,122 at the end of September 2026. That is a loss of 133,262 names, about 16%, in 30 days.
The registry had added a net 165,000 names in July 2025, in a promotion. It seemed to Murphy that most of those names had now been allowed to expire.
The arithmetic that follows is ours. The September drop is about four fifths of the July 2025 gain. If, as Murphy supposed, the names that dropped were the ones the promotion brought in, then about four in five of them were worth a first year to their buyers, but not a second.
For a holder, the lesson is in the timing. A promotion fills a portfolio in one month. A year later it bills that portfolio in one month too, when every name bought at the promotion's price renews at the standard one. Here, the renewal month took one name in six.
Before you buy into a promotion, write the standard renewal beside the promotion price. Then count the names you would keep at that renewal: they are the portfolio you are buying. The rest is one year paid for names you will drop on day 365, along with everyone else who drops theirs.
Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 5 October 2026: Junk drop hits .my domains hard
Two-year terms, rises after you bought, and the lock
Some endings bill two years at once. On .ai, every registration and renewal has a two-year minimum. The ending was raising its wholesale feeWholesale feeWhat the company that runs an ending charges a registrar for each name a year. The registrar adds its own markup to reach the price you pay.Read the definition, the registry's charge to registrars, by $10 a year from 5 March 2026, to $160 per registration or renewal, Domain Name Wire reported on 2 February 2026. Renewing before that date avoided the rise.
So one .ai renewal decides two years of cost at once. Across the registrars we price, the first year of .ai is $85.60 and the yearly renewal is $84.15. Add the first year to four renewals, then set that total against the 12-month median of the .ai sales we track, which is $810. Then count the sales behind that median: 3,523.
On .ai there was no launch-day junk drop, Allemann wrote on 29 June 2026. Instead, more names were reaching their first renewal: the 54,372 added in the three months to 1 October 2024, when .ai counted 533,068 in all. Many names now expiring were registered late, after the better ones were gone, the article added. Allemann expected investors in 2026 to be extra careful before paying another $160 or more.
A rise also reaches the names you already hold. On the generic endings, ICANNICANNThe body that sets the rules for domain names and approves new endings.Read the definition's rules give you six months to act on it. A country ending such as .ai can give far less. The case after this section shows one registry's rise and the lock that came with it. Ahead of a rise, renew only the names you are keeping.
Our renewal trapRenewal trapA cheap first year followed by a renewal at least twice the first year and at least $10 more. The low price wins the sale, and the yearly fee afterwards is where the cost really is.Read the definition flag sees a renewal that is at least twice the first year and at least ten dollars above it. It does not see a premium on one name, or a rise to come. On 10 November 2026, 4 of the 9 registrars we price flagged a trap on .co, 2 on .io and 2 on .org. None of the 7 we price on .ai flagged one.
Sixteen endings raised in price, and a ten-year lock
Case- Endings raised
- 16 of 27
- Largest rise
- about $10 or $20 to about $300 a year (2017)
- Notice required
- six months
- Price lock
- renew up to ten years at the old price
Uniregistry would raise 16 of its 27 endings by up to 3,000% from 8 September 2017 onwards, Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 7 March 2017. Uniregistry's chief executive, Frank Schilling, confirmed it, saying that low-volume endings needed more revenue to survive. Most of the 16 had fewer than 10,000 names each.
The rises took .hosting from about $20 a year and .juegos from about $10 a year to about $300 each. Seven more endings, priced at $10 to $25, went to about $100 a year. On .click and .link, the rise was a dollar or two. By our arithmetic from Murphy's figures, a name held at $20 would cost fifteen times as much from September.
Two facts protected a holder. ICANN's rules require six months' notice of a fee increase. The rise, announced in March, started in September. Until then, Murphy wrote, registrantsRegistrantThe person or company the official record names as the holder of a domain. Changing the registrant can block a move to another registrar for a while.Read the definition could lock the current price by renewing for up to ten years. By our arithmetic, ten years of .hosting at about $20 came to about $200, less than one year at the new price.
Four weeks later Uniregistry exempted names registered before 8 September 2017 from the rise (Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 4 April 2017). Ten years at the old price on a name you would have dropped is ten years of renewals paid at once. Lock the price on the keepers, the names whose five-year cost fits what names like them sold for, and let the rest go.
Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 7 March 2017: Schilling: big price increases needed to keep new gTLDs alive
The yearly decision, on a written rule
Allemann set out a method on Domain Name Wire on 4 January 2021. First, ask the marketplaceMarketplaceA site where owners list domains for sale and buyers make offers, such as Sedo or Afternic.Read the definition for a leads report. A name that had already drawn real offers, even of $500, was probably not one to drop, that 2021 article said. Allemann held about 1,700 names and in that round turned auto-renewAuto-renewA setting that renews a name for you every year, so it never lapses by accident.Read the definition off on about 80, roughly a tenth of six months' renewals.
Allemann's questions in 2021 were these. Will this name ever sell for real money? Is the singular or the plural open to register, which suggests the name is worth little? Was it priced under $500 in 2020 and still unsold? Has any name on the same theme sold or drawn an inquiry? Why has it not sold yet?
Decide late, not early. On 22 June 2017 Allemann reported turning auto-renew off on a name registered in 2004. It then turned out that someone had just registered the word in several other endings. Allemann paid a redemptionRedemptionAbout 30 days after the grace period, when the name is deleted but only its last owner can still restore it, for a fee. If nobody does, it moves to pending delete.Read the definition fee to renew the name. From then on, Allemann wrote, a final decision would probably come closer to expiry.
Once a year, audit your list of names from your registrar's export, as Allemann advised on Domain Name Wire on 1 October 2020. Check the nameserversNameserverThe server that answers for a domain on the internet, telling browsers and mail where to go. Changing it moves the site or the mail to another host.Read the definition, the contact details and which names are on auto-renew.
- Export your names from the registrar with their expiry dates. Take the ones that expire in the next six months.
- Renew in bulk the names you would buy again today. Beside each one, write the lowest price you would accept.
- For each of the others, read the year's leads, the sales we track for names like it, and whether its plural is open to register.
- Turn auto-renew off on the names you plan to drop, and send the last call below to anyone who asked about one of them. Make the final decision in the last weeks before expiry.
Read the cost to hold in Unique Domains
Every row in Browse shows the renewal beside the price. In the drawer, the Price and cost section shows Year 1Year 1What a new domain costs to register for its first year. Registrars often lower it to win the sale, so it can be far below the renewal.Read the definition, Renewal and Five years. Under The ending, each registrar we price shows its first year and its renewal, with the cheapest renewalCheapest renewalThe lowest yearly fee among the registrars we compare for an ending. Over several years it matters more than the first year.Read the definition marked and the renewal trap flagged.
Registrars, a page of the Investor plan, prices your watched names under Cost to hold, each at the registrar that its WHOISWHOISThe public record of who registered a domain and when. Most owner contact detail is hidden by privacy rules, but the dates are not.Read the definition record names. The page also lists the week's confirmed price changes. Its Watch .io prices pill says how price changes reach you today.
Unique Domains keeps no portfolio of the names you own, so their renewals stay in your own records. The list of the names you own is your registrar's export.
Before the renewal round
Ask about the batch before a rise
Write this to your registrar's support when a rise is announced on an ending where you hold names.
Hello,
I hold [number] names on [ending] with you, expiring between [month] and [month]. Could you confirm in writing:
1. The renewal price per name today, in [currency], and the date the announced increase applies from.
2. How many years ahead I can renew at today's price, and whether a bulk renewal keeps that price.
3. Which of these names carries a premium price of its own, and what it renews at.
Thank you,
[your name]
Renew the names you are keeping once you have the answer.
A last call before you let a name go
Write this to someone who asked about the name and did not buy, in the month you decide whether to renew it.
Hello [first name],
You asked about [name] on [date]. I am renewing my names this month and deciding which to keep.
If you still want it, [price] holds until [date], and the name is transferred through [escrow service] within a day of payment.
After that date I will decide without your answer.
Best regards,
[your name]
Send this message once, with no follow-up. A real reply means the name is kept or sold, not dropped.
Try it in Appraise
Your turn- Open AppraiseAppraiseA value estimate for one name or a whole list, with every name placed on one shared axis.Read the definition on the Investor plan. Paste your next renewal batch, or import it from a WatchlistWatchlistEvery name you watch, on one page, sorted into lists of your own. When one of them changes price, status or deadline, you are told.Read the definition or a CSV, up to 1,000 names a run. The sheet opens with every name pending and fills batch by batch.
- Write down each name's Marketplace figure and the run's Median. No figure means no estimate came back. Not checked means nobody checked whether the name is free.
- Open a row. The drawer opens at its first depth, which spends nothing. Under Price and cost, write Renewal and Five years beside the figure. The second depth runs the full analysis, counted once against your month: open it only for a keeper.
- Divide Five years by the Marketplace figure. A result near or above one means a renewal bill: decide those names first. Export the run to keep the figures with your renewal list.
Sources
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 6 November 2014: BuyDomains and the economics of large domain portfolios
- Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 7 March 2017: Schilling: big price increases needed to keep new gTLDs alive
- Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 4 April 2017: Uniregistry to grandfather existing domains before big price increases
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 22 June 2017: Track your domains even after you decide not to renew them
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 1 October 2020: Audit your domain name portfolio
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 4 January 2021: How I decide which domains to renew vs. delete
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 28 July 2022: I just spent $8,692.71 on domain renewals. Here’s how I decided what to keep
- Konstantinos Zournas, OnlineDomain, 2 October 2024: CENTR study about domain renewals
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 23 September 2025: Google’s parked domain purge captures final advertisers and devastates parking revenue
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 2 February 2026: .AI domain name prices going up $20
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 29 June 2026: The coming .ai “junk drop”
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 22 July 2026: Radix posts more premium domain growth led by .tech, .space
- Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, 5 October 2026: Junk drop hits .my domains hard
This course explains how the trade works. It is not legal or financial advice.