From reseller perspective this is pain. My white-label clients see .com as default, they do not understand why .store or .xyz is cheaper. I absorb the hike or I look cheap. Considering raising my own prices 8% across board to cover Verisign plus currency drift.
I run inference APIs on consumer GPUs so my infra is already janky. Moved my project domain to .app because Google Registry has not hiked in two years and it fits tech niche anyway. $14 flat. Not cheaper but predictable beats cheap when you are bootstrapping.
In Singapore we get hit on both ends. OVHcloud bills EUR, Verisign bills USD, my card charges SGD conversion. The .com hike is maybe 15% but my actual cost swing is 20-25% depending on forex week. Looking at .sg more seriously now for local projects.
I finally escaped shared hosting in 2025 and the first thing I learn is domain monopolies are worse than hosting oversell. At least hosting has competition. Verisign has .com forever and ICANN just rubber-stamps because contract. Depressing.
In Japan Contabo has Tokyo datacenter so I use them for VPS, but their domain prices are not competitive against local registrars like Onamae or Value Domain. I keep .com at Value Domain, .jp at Onamae, separate everything. More work but no single point of pricing failure.
This thread convinced me to check my renewals. I have 4 .coms at Namecheap, all auto-renew in November. Namecheap already sent warning email about price adjustment. No number given, just "adjustment." Thanks Verisign.
