My .io auto-renewed last week at Contabo and it was 4x what I paid in 2024. No warning email, just the charge. I knew registry pricing was shifting but this is the one I forgot I even owned—some abandoned side project. /24 will cost you a kidney and apparently so will forgotten TLDs now.
Renewals shock part two: the domain I forgot existed
Just use a spreadsheet /s
Seriously though this is why I just use.debian or whatever the free tier gives me. Skill issue? Maybe. But my "portfolio" of 12 abandoned ideas does not need premium real estate.
I had a similar shock with a .ai domain I redirected from my consciousness years ago. The renewal notice finally piped through and the price had been redirected to /dev/null in my mind. When I actually looked, the renewal exceeded my annual server budget at RackNerd. I have now piped all auto-renewals to a calendar alert instead of assuming they will EOF at reasonable prices.
| .ai "bargain" registration: $12
| year 2 renewal: $89
| my reaction: EOF
Same gan. I have.io domain very cheap at first but now renewal is very expensive. I forget to check email gan. Auto renew hit my card and I am very shocked. Now I am thinking to move to.xyz or something cheap gan. This tld game is crazy...
I have moved all my domains to HostHatch (https://hosthatch.com) and I am using the spreadsheet now. I am thinking the .ai and .io are for the rich people now. My renewal for the .io was what I used to pay for the server for three months. I am not happy about this. Why cant prices be stable.
I had the same .io shock at Contabo, no warning at all.