A $1.49 domain that renews at $40.99 is not a cheap domain.

Because the registry that runs the extension discounts new registrations to grow it, and that discount is for one year only. The renewal is the real price of the domain and the first year is marketing. It is not a trick played by the shop you buy from — every registrar pays the same promotional cost and the same renewal cost. What differs is whether they show you the second number before you pay. The widest gap in our own table is .college: $1.99 to register, $67.99 to renew, which is 34 times the price.

Over three years, .top at $13.47 for the first year and two renewals — and it is not the one with the cheapest first year. The tables on this page are computed from the same price list the cart uses, so you can check the arithmetic yourself: first year, plus renewal, plus renewal.

You can transfer a domain to another registrar, and we will not stand in your way — we publish the transfer price for every extension and release the authorisation code on request. What a transfer does not do is escape the renewal price: it adds a year at the new registrar's price, and their renewal is set by the same registry. Moving is worth doing for service or for a genuinely better price, not as a way to keep a promotional rate.

No. It is included on 468 of the 472 extensions we sell — every one where the registry permits it — and it is on by default rather than a checkbox you have to find. Where an extension does not offer it, that is a registry rule and no registrar can sell it to you.

No. The price on this page is the price on the invoice. Tax is worked out at checkout from where you are and your tax number, and there is no separate service, ICANN or setup line — those are already inside the number you see.

It stops resolving, then enters the registry's redemption period, and getting it back from there costs considerably more than renewing would have. We send notices before the date rather than after it. If you no longer want a domain, letting it lapse is a legitimate choice — just make it deliberately rather than by surprise.

Not directly — search engines do not rank a site down for its extension. What is true is that some extensions are heavily used by spam and end up on more blocklists, which can affect email deliverability far more than it affects rankings. If the domain will send mail, that is the risk worth weighing, not the ranking one.