The price of domain names may differ depending on what TLD is involved, and may even change within the same TLD depending on how rare or valuable the name may be. Essentially, the price of the domain is split up into three main parties:
- ICANN
- Domain name registry
- Domain Registrar
Formed in 1998, ICANN ( Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. You can think of it as the postal system of the internet. It’s the governing body that works to standardize and maintain the naming system used for the worldwide web. Because ICANN is a non-profit organization, it only charges a nominal fee of 18 cents (per year) for the sale of each domain name which falls under its governance.
The Domain Name Registry is the body or company which is authorized by ICANN to oversee the TLD in question. For example, Verisign is responsible for overseeing .com domains, while Neustar oversees .biz, .us and a few other TLDs. Of the registration fees paid, about $8 goes to the registry.
Domain Registrars would be hosting companies like Create.com, NameCheap or GoDaddy. Domain name registries do not directly sell domain names but allow the domain registrars to handle those matters. Registrars will get any remaining money above the base fee paid to the domain name registry.
Free Domain Names
As stated before how ICANN gets a fee for sale of domains under its governance, Well, ICANN is not the only body which oversees domain names. ICANN was founded in 1998, but there are TLDs which predate its existence or are otherwise outside of its jurisdiction. Of these, the most important to note are country-code TLDs (ccTLD) simply because of the issue of sovereignty. How each of these TLDs are administered depends on then country. For example, in the UK the .uk ccTLD is overseen by Nominet UK, while the tiny island of Tokelau (population barely 1,500 strong) has Freenom as the administrator for .tk domains.
Freenom is the registry operator in charge of .tk ccTLDs. These ccTLDs are given away free except in some premium cases. Premium cases normally involve trademark names, for example coca-cola.tk which costs around $1,800. Because of the country’s liberal giveaway of .tk extension ccTLDs, they have become widely registered and it is currently the fifth most-registered TLD in the world after .com, .net, .de and .cn respectively.
The most popular free TLDs are typically:
- .TK
- .ML
- .GA
- .CF
- .GQ
Important Things to remember while managing our customers accounts are firstly, a new account using a free domain will always be put into manual verification. The customer will have to fully verify their hosting account before being activated. And free domain names can be hosted here at Create, but they can not be transferred to our registry system.