The short version
On 1 November 2026, Verisign — the single company that operates the .com registry — raises the wholesale fee it charges every domain registrar in the world from US$10.26 to US$10.97 per domain, per year.
That is US$0.71, or about RM2.89 at today’s rate of US$1 ≈ RM4.07. It applies to new registrations, renewals and inbound transfers. Verisign gave formal notice on 23 April 2026, honouring the six-month notice period in its contract with ICANN.
It is not a large number. It is also not the whole number, and it is not a decision your registrar made.
What is actually changing
Every .com domain in existence passes through one registry. Registrars — the companies you buy from — pay Verisign a wholesale fee per domain-year and then set their own retail price on top. The increase lands on three transactions:
- New registrations — a first-year .com bought after the cutover
- Renewals — every existing .com, each year it comes up
- Inbound transfers — a transfer adds a year to your term, so it is billed like a renewal
Two things sit on top of the headline figure. ICANN’s per-transaction fee rose from US$0.18 to US$0.20 on 1 July 2025; it is charged in addition to the registry fee. Add the two and the underlying industry cost of a single .com year becomes roughly US$11.17 — about RM45 — before any registrar adds a margin.
And it is a floor, not a bill. US$10.97 is what your registrar pays. Whether it reaches you, and by how much, is a commercial choice registrars make differently: some absorb it, some pass it through exactly, and some use the moment to widen their own margin.
Why this is happening — and it is not about cost
The instinct is to assume an increase reflects rising operating costs. For .com, that is not the mechanism. The increase is written into a contract and it is on a schedule.
Verisign’s .com Registry Agreement with ICANN, renewed in November 2024, keeps it as the sole registry operator through 30 November 2030. Under that agreement, Verisign may raise the .com price by up to 7% in each of the final four years of every six-year period. The current six-year period began 26 October 2024.
That is why there was no increase in 2025 — it was not a permitted year — and why this November is the first rise of the current cycle. Up to three more are permitted before the period closes.
Three further facts explain why the price can move at all:
- There is no competitor. Verisign is the only .com registry. There is no second supplier to undercut it, so ordinary price competition cannot discipline the fee.
- The fee is far above the cost of delivering it. Industry estimates have long put the running cost of the .com registry at roughly US$1 per domain per year, against a fee now approaching US$11.
- It is Verisign’s principal growth lever. Its own quarterly filing for the period ended 31 March 2026 reports revenue of US$428.9 million, up 6.7% year on year, on a .com and .net base of 176.1 million registrations — and attributes the growth to the base expanding and to “the impact of new and prior price increases”.
Source: Verisign Inc., Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended 31 March 2026, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing states the 23 April 2026 announcement and both price figures directly.
The history: nine years frozen, then seven years of increases
Verisign has run .com since 2000, when it acquired Network Solutions. For most of the last quarter-century the price was either capped, frozen, or being raised by the maximum allowed.
| Effective | Wholesale .com | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2000–2006 | US$6.00 | stable under early agreements |
| 2007–2011 | US$6.42 → US$7.85 | annual 7% increases begin |
| 2012 – Aug 2021 | US$7.85 — frozen | nine years with no increase permitted |
| 1 Sep 2021 | US$8.39 | +7% |
| 1 Sep 2022 | US$8.97 | +7% |
| 1 Sep 2023 | US$9.59 | +7% |
| 1 Sep 2024 | US$10.26 | +7% |
| 2025 | US$10.26 | no increase — not a permitted year |
| 1 Nov 2026 | US$10.97 | +7% |
The 2012 freeze
The US$7.85 price that held for nine years was not a commercial decision by Verisign. It was US government policy. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) holds a Cooperative Agreement over Verisign alongside the ICANN contract, and in 2012 the price was frozen. The 2012 registry agreement that followed fixed the fee with no increases permitted at all.
The 2018 unlock — the decision that made this possible
In November 2018 the NTIA extended Verisign’s contract to 2024 and repealed the price controls. The amendment, in the NTIA’s own words, gave Verisign “the pricing flexibility to change its .com Registry Agreement with ICANN to increase wholesale .com prices.” The stated justification was that country-code domains, new generic top-level domains and social media had “created a more dynamic DNS marketplace.”
That is the hinge. Everything above — 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and now November 2026 — flows from a single administrative decision made eight years ago. Once the cap was written in, Verisign has taken the maximum every time it has been permitted to.
The 2024 renewal
The November 2024 ICANN renewal reset the clock. It locked Verisign in as registry operator for another six years and re-granted the 7% allowance for the final four years of that term. The current cycle opened on 26 October 2024. 2025 was therefore capped, and 2026 is the first year the increase could be taken.
Cumulatively: from the frozen US$7.85 of 2012 to US$10.97 this November, the wholesale price of a .com has risen 39.7%.
What to do before 1 November 2026
The useful detail is buried in the contract rather than the announcement. The Registry Agreement obliges Verisign to keep offering registration terms of up to 10 years at the current price right up to the cutover.
That gives you four levers, in order of value:
- Renew for the longest term you can justify. A domain-year renewed before 1 November is billed at the old rate for the full term you buy. The saving is real only on domain-years you would have bought anyway — a prepaid year on a name you later drop is not a saving, it is money spent.
- Transfer first if you are on a high renewal price. A transfer adds a year at the receiving registrar’s current rate. Moving from a registrar charging US$21.99 to one charging near cost saves far more than the registry increase itself, and locks the lower rate in for the added year.
- Register the names you have been sitting on. First-year pricing is affected too, and promotional rates below wholesale will not survive the change.
- Look at the renewal column, not the sign-up column. Promotional first years are a customer-acquisition cost. The renewal price is the one you pay for as long as you own the name.
The bigger picture
If Verisign takes the full allowance in each remaining permitted year, wholesale .com lands somewhere near US$13.42 — about RM54.60 — by the time the current term closes in 2030. Verisign does not forecast its own pricing, so treat that as a ceiling rather than a prediction. The direction is the point.
For a Malaysian business holding one name, this is a rounding error. For a business holding fifty, or an agency holding domains on behalf of clients, it is a recurring input cost that compounds every year the contract allows. The registry increase is not something your registrar chose, and not something your registrar can opt out of — but the timing of your renewal is entirely yours, and it expires on 1 November.
Sources
- Verisign Inc. — Form 10-Q, quarterly period ended 31 March 2026 (US Securities and Exchange Commission). States the 23 April 2026 announcement, the US$10.26 → US$10.97 increase and the 1 November 2026 effective date.
- ICANN — Registry Agreements, including the .com Registry Agreement renewed November 2024.
- NTIA — Domain Name System. The US agency whose November 2018 Cooperative Agreement amendment repealed the .com price controls.
- Verisign — .com domain names.
Currency conversion at US$1 = RM4.0703, mid-market rate, 14 September 2026. Wholesale figures are US dollars as published by Verisign; retail prices in Malaysia vary by registrar, term and applicable service tax.
Before 1 November – what to do with your .com
The rise is per domain, per year, and it applies to renewals as well as new registrations. The one lever you have is timing: renew before 1 November 2026 and you keep the current wholesale rate for the whole term you pay for – up to ten years, because the registry agreement obliges Verisign to keep offering that.
Big Domain is a Malaysian registrar. We handle .com registration and renewal, plus the hosting, SSL and business email that sit behind the domain.
See Big Domain domain services and renew early →
Managing a portfolio rather than a single domain? Talk to Big Domain →
Big Domain is a one-stop technology partner for Malaysian businesses – domain registration, hosting, web design, SEO and agentic AI under one roof. bigdomain.my
