This blog was initially published on May 28, 2020. In our July 23, 2020 earnings release the company stated that the wholesale restore fee waiver for expired domains would be extended through the end of 2020. Further information can be found here.
Two months ago we implemented a number of measures to respond to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. These measures were designed to support the communities we serve and in which we are located, while maintaining our focus on providing secure, stable and resilient critical internet infrastructure.
One of the steps we took was to waive, for .com and .net domain names, the one-time wholesale restore fee, which is charged to restore to active status a domain name registration which has been deleted by a registrar. We announced on April 2, 2020 that this fee would be waived for a 60-day period, and we are pleased that many of our registrar partners have extended waivers to their customers. We estimate these restore fee waivers have already saved several million dollars for registrants of all types, including hard hit small businesses.
As the pandemic continues, we are conscious that individuals and businesses across the globe are reconfiguring, adjusting and determining what the new “normal” now looks like for them. We want to continue to help during this period of transition.
To do this, and because of the success of the initial waiver, we are announcing today that the waiver of the wholesale restore fee for .com and .net domain names is extended until August 1, 2020 at 03:59:59 UTC.
We are also expanding the waiver of the wholesale restore fees to include the .cc, .tv, and .name TLDs, as well as our four Internationalized TLDs (IDN TLDs), the Hebrew, Korean and Japanese transliterations of .com and the Korean transliteration of .net. The waiver for these additional TLDs will be in effect beginning June 1, 2020 at 00:00:00 UTC through August 1, 2020 at 23:59:59 UTC.
We trust that our registrar partners will again join us in passing on restore fee waivers to registrants.
You can read more about our previous steps to respond to COVID-19 here and here, and please continue to check back here for future updates.
