WordPress promises not to increase prices on .Blog domain name renewals

WordPress and its company Knock Knock WHOIS There that owns the rights to the .blog domains announced an amendment to the .blog Registry-Registrar Agreement. Changes will be effective on July 15th, 2017.

WordPress said that keeping things simple allows registrars and resellers to focus on their core business.

The modifications they made are:

• The addition of section 3.14 regarding Rights Protection Mechanisms and Uniform Rapid Suspension compliance, as required by ICANN.
• Clarification to section 7.1(ii) to further limit the scope of liability for our registrars.
• An amendment to section 5.1.1 to ensure that the pricing of a .blog domain, once registered, will not increase.

This final amendment is to underscore the company’s stance on price stability in the new gTLD marketplace. Any .blog domain that is registered will not see a pricing increase for renewals on subsequent years.

“Pricing stability improves a registrar’s ability to promote new gTLDs to website owners, both new and experienced alike. By building a sense of security and predictability amongst end-users, we contribute to the perception of new gTLDs as reliable and accessible options.

We also believe this allows .blog registrars to focus on sales, without the worry of future price changes that would cause complexities to their business. As Domain Name Wire indicates, introducing pricing changes, along with a wide variety of pricing tiers, creates a barrier to registrars interested in onboarding more new gTLDs. We’d like to see the barrier to entry as low as possible to promote usage and a broader acceptance of new gTLD domains.”

In the past few months the decision of Uniregistry to make huge price increases has caused a lot of concerns in the domain name industry as for the stability of the New gTLD program.

Several registries rushed to make similar promises like the .blog registry in March 2017.

The .blog domain name launch was not as smooth as it should have been and although the extension stands at about 90,000 registrations today several unanswered questions remain.