CentralNic announced that domain registration, renewal, and transfer prices are going up on Tuesday, 21st of November 2023. The price increase affects specific domain structures:
- SA.com domains – Standard pricing goes to $219 dollars
- ZA.com domains – Standard pricing goes to $219 dollars
- RU.com domains – Standard pricing goes to $99 dollars
The price increases seem to be pretty steep.
One can renew ZA.com and SA.com domains for $148.99 currently, and RU.com domains for $58.99 at SAV, with all domain registrations costing 99 cents.
Do you really need such domains? It depends. SA stands for Saudi Arabia, ZA stands for South Africa, and RU is Russia. By using a structure that relies on the LL .com, CentralNic has created a business model that bypasses the local ccTLDs.
Quite often, such domains are used for spamming purposes due to the low registration cost that the Registry offers to Registrars.
