Domain Pricing 101

If you work on the business development side of the domain names industry, at some point you will need to do some market research and price analysis. In this blog post, we are sharing our step-by-step approach to compare domain prices.

Identify your closest competitors

Make a list of all your competitors. Write down everyone you know, and ask your colleagues too. You can also consult industry experts or use sites like namestat.org, newgtldstat.org or domainnamestats.com to complete your list.

Collect information

Now that you have a list of competitors, it’s time to collect their prices for all domain operations. How much does it cost to register, renew and transfer a domain with them? Make sure you file additional costs, such as ICANN fee or a processing fee in a separate column.

 Analyze the market

1. 1. What are the minimum prices for registrations, renewals and transfers?
   2. What are the maximum prices? 
   3. What is the median price – meaning, what is the average price that half of the companies sell for? We suggest using the median instead of average, as it is not distorted so much by the small portions of extremely high or low prices. It therefore better represents the current market state.
   4. Which companies offer the cheapest registration and cheapest update? What are their additional costs, if any?

Pro tip: always calculate the cost of owning a domain for a minimum of 2 years. This is why we recommend to identify the minimum price for both registration and renewal. Many companies drop the price for the first year and make renewal excessively expensive. This leads to a high % of non-renewed domains and a high churn rate.

In summary, the lowest registration price does not guarantee a low total cost of ownership. This is why the calculation of the domain price for two years gives you higher precision.

Feel free to use this attached template we created. Fill it in with your numbers and see how you measure against the market to find the best price for your domains.

We hope this approach to compare domain prices was useful for you! Please let us know if you have any feedback for us.