[tzs]

Network Solutions also offers 20 year and 100 year terms. ICANN rules say 10 years is the max, so I'm not sure how this works. Does NS just deal with it 10 years at a time at the underlying registry, eating any price increases themselves?

20 years .org at NS is $13.99/year, which is close to the more reasonable registries, such as Namecheap. 100 years gets it to $9.99/year, which is pretty good--if you believe that NS will really eat any underlying price increases over that time (and, of course, you will actually be using the domain for most of that time). (Well...pretty good until you remember that NS charges another $10/month for WHOIS privacy, which is free at Namecheap [1]).

[1] ...and I would assume at other popular registries. I'm just using Namecheap for comparisons because that is where I now have my domains.

[jedberg]

That's a brilliant business model. They get all the money up front, get to invest how they want, and if there is a price increase, it probably will be less than inflation, and almost certainly less than their investment returns on your upfront payment.

[tzs]

It occurs to me that another possibility is that the 10 year limit does not apply to Network Solutions. Network Solutions was a registrar for something close to a decade before ICANN was created. It's possible that there is some sort of grandfathering that lets them operate under pre-ICANN rules.

[londons_explore]

Potentially unlimited losses if the price goes up to $99999 per year...

Although in that case, I bet they'd just give an excuse and offer a refund of the originally paid amount.

[jedberg]

Keep in mind though that the price of the domains has to still be feasible for other people to register, so it would never go that high.