Nominet increases .uk prices

Nominet announced that following the annual review of pricing, the wholesale cost for a .UK domain registration or renewal will change to £3.90 per year from 13 January 2020.

Nominet claims that “the 15p per domain increase reflects some of the increased costs of running the business since prices last changed in 2016. Having absorbed the majority of the costs, we decided that a 4% rise in the wholesale price was appropriate.”

Nominet also said:

As a world-class registry, we are committed to investing in meeting our obligations as part of critical national infrastructure, developing the resilience and reliability of our systems, delivering world-class customer service, and increasing the promotion and visibility of .UK domains. We believe these investments are important and benefit all stakeholders.

.UK domains remain extremely competitively priced in the market.

Nominet sets the wholesale prices for .UK domains, accessible to Nominet members at a discounted rate. Retail registrars set pricing for registrants.

@Nominet increases the wholesale .uk cost price by 15p from £3.75 to £3.90 claiming “increased costs of running the registry” …. Yes the same Nominet with £99 million in investments, an operating profit of £7.3m and staff costs of £18.3 million in 2019! https://t.co/XdXLSpUGlB

— Andrew Bennett (@whois_search) October 1, 2019

@Nominet is currently showing 13,315,397 domain names with a renewal rate of 73%. New registrations (post .uk ROR) are back to 132,081 per month. At 15p it will make an extra £1.5 million per year on renewals and an extra £250,000 per year on registrations https://t.co/dDO1re8beB

— Andrew Bennett (@whois_search) October 1, 2019

Nominet is taking heat for a 4% price increase since 2016 while ICANN lets all other registries increase their regsitration and renewal prices without any limit!!!

I guess everyone is fast asleep…