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A .com should cost about $10–$16 a year. The other $90 on your registrar bill is a menu of add-ons that are free elsewhere, already included, or solving problems you don't have. Here's the honest tour.
The domain is the product. Almost everything else at checkout is margin. Paid SSL, paid WHOIS privacy, paid "domain lock," premium DNS, security scanners — each is either free at a good registrar or free somewhere better. The two things genuinely worth doing cost nothing: turn on auto-renew, and check the renewal price before you buy.
Registrars pay a wholesale fee per .com — around $10 — to the registry. Selling you the domain at $12 barely keeps the lights on. The profit is in what happens between "add to cart" and "pay now": a gauntlet of pre-checked boxes and urgent-sounding protection bundles. None of this means your registrar is evil. It means the checkout page is a sales floor, and you should walk it the way you'd walk a car dealership's.
What a .com should cost: $10–$16 a year, renewal included. At-cost registrars like Cloudflare charge the wholesale fee with zero markup; Porkbun and Namecheap sit close behind with privacy free. If your renewal is $20+, the difference is buying nothing.
Already at an expensive registrar? Moving is a 30-minute job that pays a dividend every year — the step-by-step transfer guide covers it, including the DNS-copying step people miss.
The bigger picture: your domain is one line of what a website actually costs. The full pricing guide lays out every line honestly — including the ones agencies pad.
Ten line-by-line checks to run against your registrar bill — the whole guide condensed to one page you can finish in five minutes. Drop your email and it unlocks right here.
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Run these against your registrar account and last invoice.
Common questions
Worth having, not worth paying for. Regulations already redact most WHOIS data, and reputable registrars include full privacy free as standard. A registrar charging $10–$15/year for it is telling you how the rest of the menu is priced.
The lock isn't — transfer lock is a real safeguard, free and usually on by default at any reputable registrar. Paying extra for a branded protection bundle that includes it is paying for the padlock your door came with.
Almost certainly not. Cloudflare's free DNS is among the fastest and most reliable in the world. Registrar "premium DNS" at $3–$5/month is a slower version of something you can have free.
First-year prices are loss leaders — $2–$9 to win you, $20+ to keep you, betting you won't bother moving. The renewal price is the real price. Check it before registering; transfer out if you're stuck.
No — you should, in your own account, always. It's the deed to your online presence. A good developer works inside your account or with delegated access. Our builds always register the domain to the client.
Audit the whole picture
See what a website should actually cost — every line itemized honestly, no padding.