I was musing about the history of the web and I got to wondering, how much has the price of domain registration changed from 10 years ago, or even 20 years ago? Has it gone up? Down? I figure it would be generally more affordable now with all the competing companies.
Also, sort of related, a friend of mine claims that domain registrations were only available in 5 or 10 year blocks until the dot com boom. He’s usually right, but I don’t think he has any particular knowledge on the history of domains (not that I know of), so I wonder if anyone could shed some light on that too.
Guess I’m just being overly curious at the moment.
(Not sure if there is a better place for this thread since there really isn’t a History forum.)
Down, probably, since domain purchases are now commonplace and there are dozens if not hundreds of registrars these days (not all of which may be ICANN approved).
Depending on the TLD, you can get a domain for about $2 to $12. You can also purchase exisiting domains from other who are selling them. I’ve seen sales in the hundreds or tens of thousands of dollars (there have been rare cases that have sold for more! )
I’ve seen 1, 3, 5, and 10 year blocks for domain name purchases/renewals. It depends on the registrar.
Back in the day, .com’s were all $35/year, the standard rate in the last few years has been $9 and change…if you factor in inflation and the fact that the price point has remained fairly stable since dropping to the $9ish level, they have become even more affordable
I would also guess the numbers are down, because most of the people/companies that want a domain already have one. Registration is now only done by the new-comers.
Domains were, at one time, free. Indeed the .com was free up to 1995. The initial fee based registration period was for two years and this ended up being $100 for the first two years. The .com used be expensive but with the registrars system the price fell dramatically due to competition between the registrars.
The link below should fill in the backstory.
Also, sort of related, a friend of mine claims that domain registrations were only available in 5 or 10 year blocks until the dot com boom. He’s usually right, but I don’t think he has any particular knowledge on the history of domains (not that I know of), so I wonder if anyone could shed some light on that too.
Your friend is wrong.
Plenty of domain names are registered now, but at the same time they do not have web sites. So thay are under control of domainers which consider them as subject of investment only.
The reason prices with registrars are cheaper is simply due to the sheer scale of registrations, I guess this is in-part thanks to all those idiots who snatch up thousands of domains and “stock” them until people bid heavy prices for the “premium” titles (I once heard something like 80% of all domain registrations are fluff).
I think it was in a web hosting podcast, however I can’t cite it as I stated I heard something like that figure (thereby I don’t have anything concrete to quote from).
That’s not exactly accurate. Brand protection registrations now account for a large part of the newer gTLDs and also for .com itself. Many ccTLDs would have a similar .com (if it is available) due to people and businesses registering a ccTLD and the equivalent .com.
Not all domains have functioning websites and while domainers and PPC parking account for a percentage of registered domains in any TLD, most domains will have holding pages or not have been set up. Over the last few years, domains registered purely for their PPC value by domainers has driven growth in some TLDs. With .eu it was so bad that it effectively killed the extension as a viable ccTLD for the EU. Non-EU cyberwarehousers and cybersquatters effectively took the bulk of the domain names that would form the basis for natural growth and development in a new TLD. Without these domains to drive development, the level of website development in .eu collapsed. That is very much the worst case example. Most genuine ccTLDs in Europe are better run than .eu and have a far more complex usage.
These are the preliminary results of a survey of Irish hosted com/net/org/biz/info/ie/eu websites that I ran last week:
The Active/unclassified figure is still a bit high but you can see how the domain usage varies with holding pages being one of the biggest percentages. The PPC parking is traditionally low (it would be far higher in .com as a whole) but there is a trend of registrars and hosters parking unused domain names on their PPC pages.
Nope. It was for all domains and I’m sure it was from a reliable source (if only my memory was good), though I have an EU domain redirecting to my .com
That source is about as reliable as they get in that about 1.7M .eu domains were surveyed - though I might be biased. Most .eu domains where they are owned by the .ccTLD or EU .com owners are redirected. The number of detected .eu domains on Irish hosters was around 7.6K but Eurid was claiming that the number of Irish .eu domains was around 51K. Most of what Eurid claims are Irish are actually Dotster’s and Ultsearch’s cyberwarehousing operations using Irish front companies. The UK’s .eu figure is similarly overstated from non-EU cyberwarehousing operations using UK front companies. The utilisation figures for detected Irish hosted .eu domains put it on a par with Irish usage of .biz gTLD. The domain usage pattern in most EU countries is .ccTLD/.com with .net/org being used too. The .info and .biz tend to be less well used. The cross TLD comparisons show that there is a lot brand protection going on with the smaller TLDs.
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Most .eu domains where they are owned by the .ccTLD or EU .com owners are redirected. The number of detected .eu domains on Irish hosters was around 7.6K but Eurid was claiming that the number of Irish .eu domains was around 51K. Most of what Eurid claims are Irish are actually Dotster’s and Ultsearch’s cyberwarehousing operations using Irish front companies. The UK’s .eu figure is similarly overstated from non-EU cyberwarehousing operations using UK front companies. The utilisation figures for detected Irish hosted .eu domains put it on a par with Irish usage of .biz gTLD. The domain usage pattern in most EU countries is .ccTLD/.com with .net/org being used too. The .info and .biz tend to be less well used. The cross TLD comparisons show that there is a lot brand protection going on with the smaller TLDs.