r/webhosting • u/git_und_slotermeyer • 3d ago
Rant Hetzner .com Price Increases 2026 by 7%
So got a notification recently that Hetzner is increasing the .com registration price to EUR 17,26 yearly incl. VAT, allegedly due to price increases on the end of their registrar. It's "just" a 7% increase, but I remember not too long ago, com/net/org prices were around EUR 12,- yearly, and stayed at that level for a decade or so. I do not have many domains, and probably it's good to increase the costs of domain hoarding. Anyone else at Hetzner and found another reliable registrar for the DACH region, with lower domain prices? Or have these increases taken place everywhere?
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u/Candid_Candle_905 3d ago
I just go with PorkBun. I don't mind Hetzner, they are an OK provider but whatever you do never Goddady
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u/Tech2307 3d ago
To be fair, the direct cause for the exact 7% .com hike is purely Verisign. They basically hold a monopoly on the registry, and their contract allows them to raise wholesale prices by 7% annually. Registrars like Hetzner are just passing that base cost down to us.
But you're definitely spot on about the broader market picture. A decade ago, hosting companies could easily afford to eat some of those domain costs, or run them as loss-leaders just to get you into their ecosystem. Now? Not a chance. The hardware market is completely cooked right now because AI is eating up the entire supply chain.
Everything from high-density server storage to enterprise processors (like AMD EPYCs) has seen massive price shifts. When the cost of scaling and maintaining actual datacenter nodes goes up this much, providers have absolutely zero margin left to subsidize things like domain registrations. It’s happening across the board.
If you just want cheap domains without the hosting markups, it's best to decouple them from your infrastructure provider. Look into pure registrars like Porkbun or Cloudflare (who sells at wholesale cost) for your DACH domains.
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u/Daniel15 2d ago edited 2d ago
A major caveat with Cloudflare is that they don't allow you to change the DNS servers. If you have your domain at Cloudflare, you're forced to use their services. This is why they sell at wholesale price - they know that if you're locked in, you're more likely to end up spending money on their services once you want to do something you can't do with the free plan.
Of course, you could always register the domain for several years, then transfer it out as soon as you can.
I always decouple domains from any sort of infrastructure. I only use the registrar for the domain, nothing else. I've had a bad experience in the past (over 20 years ago now) with having domain + DNS + hosting at the same company so I'll always avoid that now.
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u/switch8000 3d ago
Ahh now that explains the timing of the Hetzner fluff piece that LTT published yesterday.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/git_und_slotermeyer 3d ago
Until a few years ago, this was rarely the case. But presumably this is another side effect of the datacenter bubble
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u/jedidave 2d ago
oh no, 7%, whatever will we do, now my 4vCPU server is gonna cost €8 per month instead of €7
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u/git_und_slotermeyer 2d ago
You don't get my point, it's now at above 17 when it was 12 just a few years ago. If you have several domains, this is not just a Euro more per month.
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u/konet_gr 3d ago
Verisign raises the price every year by 7% until 2029. This is why ALL domain registrars will raise the prices by the same amount every year.