Last week, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced that the fees for registering .VN domain names would be lowered on 1st January 2017. Before this change, registrars were unable to charge fees higher than that stipulated by the MOF. Fees were directly transferred to the .VN Registry, VNNIC, with registrars making a commission of 30%.
From 1st January onwards, a new model has been introduced, where registrars can now set their own domain registration and maintenance fees and are free to choose their own pricing model. However, the fees charged to customers cannot exceed the ceiling levels set by the MOF.
Do Quang Trung, Head, VNNIC’s HCMC Branch said:
The policy will create competition in prices among registration agencies and eliminate price gaps between national domain name .VN and international domain names.
The MOF has lowered the base price for the domain in order to become more competitive with international domain names. The fees for .VN domain name stipulated by the government are close to, or lower than the fees for TLDs such as .COM or .NET.
Previously, the fees for registering and using a .VN domain name for the first year was VND 830,000 ($36.52) and for maintaining it was over VND 400,000 ($17.60). After 1st January, the base price set by MOF for registering a .VN domain name is VND 200,000 ($8.80), while the annual maintenance fee set at VND 350,000 ($15.40).
Huynh Ngoc Duy, CEO of Mat Bao, a domain name registration agent, said:
The policy will help lower the .VN domain name price, but will not affect market demand. I think the number of registrations for ‘.vn’ would be increasing thanks to lower fees, but the increase won’t be sharp.
Users target many things when registering domain names, including the popularity of domain names, while the registration fee is not the only factor for them to consider. Users will still favor international domain names.