For smaller domain portfolio holders, this may actually not hold true - becoming an ICANN accredited registrar may initially increase the cost of holding the domains. However there are other advantages that should be taken into consideration, such as the improved security & control for your premium domain holdings held with your own registrar.

One time fees due at the time of application

• $2,500.00 USD non-refundable application fee (not considered in the financial exercise below)

Quarterly/Monthly Fees & Dues

• Variable ICANN Fee, billed quarterly as set in the ICANN budget and divided by the number of registrars. The fee usually ranges between $1,200.00 USD and $2,000.00 USD per quarter.

• Fixed annual per TLD fee. $4,000.00 USD for the first TLD and $500 for any additional TLD. These fees are first invoiced after your new registrar has become accredited.

Ongoing Cost

• Registry Registration Fees per Domain Name Year (currently $6.86 for .COM, fees were increased in October)
• Per Domain Name Year (registration, renewal, transfer) ICANN Fee (currently $0,20)

Other Considerations

• ICANN requires the applicant to provide proof of at least $70,000.00 USD in working capital. (This amount does not need to be transferred to ICANN.)
• ICANN required Commercial General Liability Insurance coverage of at least $500,000.
• The individual registries may require additional pre-paid deposits and proof of available working capital.
• The cost of licensing and running a registrar system.

In other words, your annual fees for maintaining most basic accreditation for just the COM gTLD are as follows:

• $4,000 annual accreditation fee
• $1,200 * 4 quarterly fee (minimum assumed)
• ca. $1,000 commercial liability insurance
• Total $9,800.00 fixed cost per year

The base cost for a .COM domain name would be $6.86 + $0.20 ICANN fee, $7.06. Let’s assume that your current registrar charges you $7.95 per domain name year (= registrations, renewals & transfers), a difference of $0.89 of your base price. In order to get to the same price, you will have to process at least 11,012 ($9,800 annual cost divided by $0.89) domain name years through your registrar to match the price of $7.95.

Please note that the actual number will be even higher, since this calculation does not include the cost of running a technology solution for an accredited registrar.

The timing of the deadline is set individually on a per registrar basis and at this point mostly affects those registrars that had several extensions of the deadline before.

What is the Registrar Data Escrow Program?

Registrar Data Escrow (RDE for short) was established after Registerfly failed to be able to present registrant and domain ownership data for a number of domains under their management. Apparently the contact information for a large number of registrants had been lost and replaced with Registerfly’s own “whois privacy” information instead.

The RDE requires registrars to provide ICANN with contact information for all of the domains registered through their registrar on a regular basis in order to prevent difficulties should a registrar become non-operational.

Registrars need to sign up for RDE by signing a joint contract with ICANN and Iron Mountain, the escrow provider picked by ICANN or any other ICANN approved Escrow provider. Once that contract is approved, a sign-up form will need to be completed, encryption keys will need to be generated and then the data exports will need to be deposited.

Drop Catching Registrars and RDE

Most drop-catching registrars are either managed by eNom or Answerable/Logicboxes in the case of SnapNames.

eNom provides their registrar with an export of the RDE required data available via FTP. The registrar will then need to add any data for their own domains (if any) and encrypt & sign the data and provide it to Iron Mountain via Secure FTP.

LogicBoxes apparently offers the RDE participation at at a charge to the registrars using their system, but it may also be possible to extract the data from their system using API calls.

Not set up for RDE participation?

If you own a registrar and have received a letter of warning for your non-compliance with the RDE regulations from ICANN, act as quickly as possible in order to ensure compliance. If you need help setting the reports up, please make sure to contact your registrar operator or contact us if you need help. DomainCocoon can work with ICANN, Iron Mountain and your technical operator on your behalf in order to ensure compliance.