[tedmiston]

Are you saying the registry can arbitrarily change the .app domain renewal price without control, or that they can charge a different renewal price for different .app domains?

I've experienced weird price fluctuations with .io domain renewals in the past, but haven't owned one in a few years.

[jasonbarone]

According to registrars, yes. So for example, let's say I paid $1000 for a premium .app last year when they were released. Renewal price is marked for something like $280/yr, which I didn't expect, because I thought the premium pricing was an initial purchase price only. I thought the renewal price was standard .app renewal rates.

When I called to clarify with a few registrars, they said that this premium price ($280) is specified by the registry (Google), and that there's no guarantee that pricing will stay at $280. I used a hypothetical, and asked them if it were possible for Google to raise the price to something like $1000/yr or $10k/yr, and they confirmed that there is technically nothing stopping the registry from doing so.

[CydeWeys]

What registrar did you use? They should have made it very clear during the checkout flow what the annually recurring charge was. Can you try it again now with persona.app (another premium) and post a screenshot of what exactly they're displaying?

[towb]

Yikes! My one was and still is $63.70/year. I wonder what makes a domain "premium" anyway, and what makes it more or less premium? Never even seen a live .app domain anyway so that sort of makes them not premium at all.

[tedmiston]

One criteria I've seen used to price domains as "premium" is shorter names and popular dictionary words. Not sure if this is consistent across registrars, but I would think "premium-ness" is established at the registry level.

It's unclear to me if premium-ness is a function of time, and/or if there's an objective formulaic criteria here.

[CydeWeys]

.io is a ccTLD. They aren't bound by the same kinds of rules that gTLD operators are.