Domain .io Price Increase

[Cam]

I received an email a few days ago letting me know that NameCheap will be increasing the price of .io as of January 1st, 2024. According to NameCheap, this cost increase comes directly from the people that run .io, and they also increased the price of it at the beginning of this year as well. Obviously inflation has been rampant, so price increases aren't unexpected, but .io is getting pretty crazy, if you ask me.

Anyway, this is what I received:

Hi Cameron,

We partner with many registries to bring you a wide range of top-level domains, but occasionally their prices increase, which means we need to increase our prices too.

On January 1st, 2024, the domains registry for .io will implement universal price increases, affecting renewal, transfer, and registration fees.

See how you’re affected below:

New prices​

Domain​	Action​	Current Price​	Updated Price​
.io​	Registration/Transfer​	$44.98​	$48.98​
.io​	Renewal/Reactivate​	$44.98​	$48.98​

What to do next​

If you want to take advantage of the current price tag, renew or register your .io domains before January 1st, 2024.

I could renew ForumPromotion.net for at least four years for that price. 😛

 

[Cam]

Pulled up CloudFlare and have a similar notice. 😛

.io prices will be changing soon. Price as of January 2nd, 2024 will be $45.00

Little bit cheaper than NameCheap.

 

[Foster]

The increasing cost of .io domains does raise eyebrows, especially with the back-to-back hikes in the same year. It's really becoming a significant consideration for anyone who relies on .io for their online presence honestly. It would be intriguing to understand the specifics behind these decisions — what factors are driving these repeated price adjustments?

For those heavily invested in .io domains, this might indeed be a turning point...

 

[Cedric]

io has been increasingly popular. So it was only a matter of time.

Has nothing to do with increasing costs, inflation, etc. They're just abusing its popularity.

 

[Page]

Like any other thing, prices are going up again. Nothing new just not getting paid enough to keep up with the price rise ;(

 

[Cam]

io has been increasingly popular. So it was only a matter of time.

Has nothing to do with increasing costs, inflation, etc. They're just abusing its popularity.

They’ve been abusing the heck out of it. Doing a little bit of Googling, different registrars have introduced price increases of .io registrations in January 2022 and 2021 as well, blaming wholesale price increases.

I went ahead and took this as an opportunity to transfer my .io domains elsewhere.

 

[LeakedWorld]

.io ussed to be cheap now you can get better domains for way cheaper

 

[EchoRomeo]

I was looking at .ai domains at one point and they were even pricier than .io ($160 for two years; they don't let you just buy one year). I don't quite understand the high price of .ai, especially considering it's really not popular at all yet...I think .io is much more widely used. Future speculative hoarding of AI-related stuff, I guess?

 

[Cam]

I was looking at .ai domains at one point and they were even pricier than .io ($160 for two years; they don't let you just buy one year). I don't quite understand the high price of .ai, especially considering it's really not popular at all yet...I think .io is much more widely used. Future speculative hoarding of AI-related stuff, I guess?

With there being so many domain extensions to choose from, I don't understand any of it. Even with these extensions being trendy with tech startups and such, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to start out with these pricier extensions. I mean you can grab plenty of other two letter domain extensions for way cheaper...