Domain Prices Skyrocketed in 2021 – What to expect in2022?

2021 was a truly unprecedented year. Businesses had to adapt rapidly to the ever-changing global pandemic, and Facebook’s Metaverse announcement changed the future of the internet forever. During this short time, companies were surprised by the growing prices of domains. This price hike is expected to continue throughout 2022.

This article will explore what this domain price hike means for businesses in 2022. Read on if you’re ready to find out how this will impact your business.

The domain price hike of 2021:

In 2021, ICANN (the non-profit that is in charge of coordinating domains around the world) received a payment from Verisign of US$20 million. Verisign paid this extortionate fee to obtain permission to indefinitely increase the wholesale price of the .com domain.

This deal allows Verisign to raise the wholesale price of .com domains by up to 7% each year for four years, growing Verisign’s annual revenue to US$2 billion by 2029. This is a massive blow to business owners who use a .com domain name for their business websites.

COVID-19 domains and pharmaceutical businesses:

During the pandemic, the price of covid-associated domains, including COVID, COVID tests , covid-19 vaccine and COVID – pills, experienced significant price rises. There was a rush of pandemic related domain registrations, reaching over 4,000 domain registrations a day during March 2020.

Pharmaceutical businesses planning on registering a COVID and COVID vaccine related domain should act quickly, shop around, and register the domain for multiple years to save money and to make sure these domains get on right hands. It’s predicted that these domains will continue to rise, making registering a vaccine domain for pharmaceutical companies increasingly expensive in the future.

What the domain price hike means for business:

The biggest takeaway from the domain price hike is that businesses need to plan ahead to avoid being surprised by significant price hikes.

Domain prices like newcovidvaccine.com and newcovidpills.com are already priced  over couple million dollars and its just the beginning as pharmaceutical companies yet did not get the chance to get vaccines which will be able to be sold on commercial basis.

2022 just started and it seems to be pretty challenging for domain investors.