What a domain costs to renew, and why year two can cost more

Teaser pricing: the first year is a sales cost

A low first-year price is a sales tool. Registrars and resellers set their own retail prices, and some cut their margin in year one to win the order, then move to their full rate at renewal. That is why the renewal price, not the headline offer, is the figure to compare. For .com and other gTLDs, ICANN requires accredited registrars to show their renewal, late-renewal and restore fees clearly on their websites, and to make sure their resellers show them too. The number is there, though often on a separate pricing page. If you cannot find it, treat that as a warning. PKNIC itself has no first-year rate: its price notice and its renewal page both give Rs 2,100 a year for registrants in Pakistan.

What the registry charges behind the scenes

Every registrar pays a registry a wholesale fee, and that fee is the floor under any renewal price. For .com, Verisign charges US$10.26 a year. In April 2026 it announced that the fee for each new and renewed .com rises to US$10.97 from 1 November 2026. ICANN takes a further US$0.20 for each year added, renewed or transferred. On top come the registrar's margin, card or bank charges and the dollar-rupee rate. If a first-year .com costs less than that floor, the seller is paying the difference, so look closely at what it charges for year two. For .pk, PKNIC charges Rs 2,100 per domain per year for registrants in Pakistan, up from Rs 1,800 on 1 August 2026, and US$15.99 a year for registrants outside Pakistan. It bills in two-year blocks and accepts payment for up to ten years.

Auto-renew: useful, but only if the card and email work

Auto-renew lets the registrar charge your saved card and renew the domain before it expires. It is the simplest guard against forgetting the date. It also means you pay that year's renewal price, including any rise, without being asked. In Pakistan two things often break it. The saved card expires or the bank blocks a foreign-currency charge, and the renewal fails without much noise. Or the account email belongs to a former employee, or to an old address nobody opens. For .com and other gTLDs, ICANN requires registrars to send at least two reminders before expiry, about a month and about a week ahead. If the name has not been renewed, they must send one more within five days after expiry. Those reminders only help if the address on the account is one you read. Check it once a year and after any staff change.

Expiry, grace and redemption: what the clock looks like

For .com and other gTLDs, expiry is not the end. The day after a .com expires, the registry renews it automatically and the registrar gets a 45-day grace period. How much of that you get is up to the registrar. It may delete the name at any time after expiry, and its late-renewal fee may differ from the normal one. If it keeps the name for eight days or more after expiry, ICANN requires it to cut off the domain's DNS for at least the last eight days you can still renew. A website that suddenly goes dark is the warning. A deleted name then has a 30-day redemption period. You can still recover it, but only through the registrar that deleted it, and a restore fee applies. After that come five days of pending delete, and then anyone can register the name. PKNIC's renewal page gives no grace or redemption schedule for .pk, so treat the expiry date itself as the deadline.

How to avoid losing a domain

A few habits guard against the usual slips.

• Pay for more than one year when the name matters. PKNIC bills .pk in two-year blocks and takes up to ten years at once; a .com can be held for up to ten years too.
• Put the expiry date in your phone and in the diary of whoever pays the bills.
• Keep the account email and mobile number current, and change them when staff leave.
• Register in your own name, or your SECP-registered company's name, never your web designer's. For .pk, PKNIC locks the registrant name at registration. Changing it later means posting a signed affidavit or authority letter to PKNIC, so a name filed by someone else stays theirs until they agree to change it.
• Treat the renewal like an FBR deadline: a fixed date, paid early, not on the last day.
• Get the renewal price in writing before you buy.

How SastiDomains handles renewal prices

We are a small Pakistani company, not a registrar. We check that a name is free, then register it in your own name through PKNIC or a registrar. You pay in rupees by bank transfer, Raast, JazzCash or Easypaisa, and we aim to file the same working day your payment arrives. Unpaid orders are cancelled after 48 hours, and if a name is taken before we file, you get a full refund. Our price list at /pricing/ shows the renewal price next to the first-term price. Where a price is not set yet, we quote both on WhatsApp before you pay, so you are never weighing a year-one deal against an unknown year two. Check availability at /domains/, order at /order/, or, if you already hold a .pk name elsewhere, see /pk-domain-transfer/.

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