The advertised price of a domain is almost always the first-year price, and the first-year price is a customer acquisition cost rather than a price. The renewal is what you actually pay, every year, for as long as you own the name — and it is frequently five to twenty times higher.
This is not hidden exactly. It is published, in a place nobody looks before checking out.
What the gap looks like
The pattern is consistent across the industry: a heavily discounted first year, then a renewal at or near the registrar's standard rate. A .com advertised at £1 to £3 for the first year typically renews somewhere between £10 and £20. That is the mild case.
The gap widens sharply on the newer extensions. .shop, .online, .site, .store and similar are frequently promoted at under £2 and renew at £30 to £45. A first year at 99p followed by a £39 renewal is a 39-fold increase, and it is entirely normal.
.io runs the other way — expensive from the start, with little or no promotional pricing, and a renewal in the £30 to £50 range that at least matches what you were originally quoted.
None of this is a scam. It is a stated price you agreed to. But the number on the landing page is not the number that matters, and the checkout flow is not designed to make that obvious.
Where to find the real price
Before buying, find the renewal figure explicitly. It exists in three places, in decreasing order of reliability:
The registrar's full pricing page. Not the promotional page — the complete TLD price list, which nearly every registrar publishes and nearly none links prominently. It has three columns: register, renew, transfer. The middle one is your actual annual cost. Search for the registrar's name with "domain pricing" to find it.
The checkout page. Many registrars now disclose the renewal price near the cart, sometimes only after the domain is added. Read it before paying.
Your account's billing section, after purchase. Accurate, but too late to influence the decision.
If you cannot find a renewal price for an extension anywhere on a registrar's site, treat that as the answer and buy elsewhere.
The multi-year trick, which genuinely works
Most registrars let you register for up to ten years at once. The promotional discount usually applies only to the first year, but locking in additional years does two useful things.
It fixes the price against future increases. Registry wholesale prices rise — the .com wholesale price has been permitted to increase annually since 2020, and those increases reach retail. Years bought today are bought at today's price.
It also removes the expiry risk entirely for that period, which matters more than the money. A domain lost to a failed renewal payment is a genuinely bad day, and it has a real recovery cost — see below.
The counter-argument is real too: ten years of a name you abandon after eighteen months is money spent for nothing. Two to three years is the sensible middle for something you are reasonably confident about.
Transferring away is the standard remedy
If a renewal price is unreasonable, you are not stuck. Domains transfer between registrars, and the transfer typically costs about one year's registration at the new registrar — and adds a year to your expiry rather than replacing it. So a transfer is usually close to price-neutral in the year you do it, and cheaper every year after.
Four practical constraints:
- The 60-day lock. A domain cannot be transferred within 60 days of initial registration, or within 60 days of a previous transfer. Changing the registrant's contact details can also trigger a 60-day lock at some registrars.
- You need the authorisation code. Sometimes called an EPP code or auth code, obtained from the current registrar. They are obliged to provide it.
- Unlock it first. The
clientTransferProhibitedstatus must be removed. You can confirm the current state with the WHOIS Lookup. - Do not leave it until the last week. Transfers take up to five days and can fail. Starting a transfer a fortnight before expiry gives you room; starting it two days before does not.
What happens if you miss a renewal
Worth knowing, because the recovery cost is substantially higher than the renewal you missed.
Immediately after expiry the domain usually stops resolving — the site goes down and email stops arriving, which is generally how people find out. There is then a grace period of roughly 30 to 45 days in which you can renew at the ordinary price.
After that comes the redemption period, around 30 days, where recovery is still possible but carries a redemption fee on top of the renewal. That fee is commonly £60 to £150 and is set by the registrar.
Then five days of pending delete, during which nothing can be done, and finally release — at which point the name is public and, if it has any value, likely to be registered within seconds by an automated service. The full sequence is covered in your domain name is taken.
Two defences, and you want both. Turn on auto-renew, and keep the payment card on the account current — an expired card is the most common cause of an accidental lapse. Then set an independent calendar reminder two months before expiry, because auto-renew fails silently often enough to be worth a backup.
Privacy, and what should be free
Domain privacy replaces your personal details in the public record with a forwarding service. Some registrars include it at no cost; others charge £5 to £15 a year for it.
For most .com-style registrations it should be free, and paying for it is worth avoiding on principle when a comparable registrar includes it. Note that for domains registered to an address in the UK or EU, GDPR already restricts publication of personal registrant data, so a paid privacy product may be selling you something you largely have by default.
What to check before you buy
A short list that takes two minutes and prevents the common outcomes:
- The renewal price, from the registrar's full price list, not the promotion.
- The transfer-out policy — that they publish auth codes without a fee or an argument.
- Whether privacy is included or charged annually.
- What else is in the cart. Promotional checkouts frequently pre-tick hosting trials, site builders, email plans or SSL products. Untick them; you can add any of them later, and the certificate in particular is available free from Let's Encrypt.
- The total across three years, not one. This is the number that makes registrars comparable, and it reorders the rankings dramatically compared with first-year pricing.
Finding a name to price
If you are still at the stage of choosing rather than buying, the Domain Name Generator produces candidates with live availability across .com, .net, .io and .co.
Availability is the first filter and renewal cost is the second — and the second one is what you live with. A name available in an extension that renews at £45 a year is a £450 decision over a decade, which is worth knowing before it is a decision you have already made.