Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief opens with a headline figure that registrars and hosts will be glad to see. The global domain base kept growing through the third quarter, and it grew a little faster than it did in the spring. Look past the totals, though, and the details of who’s registering what (and who’s sticking around) get more interesting.
We’ve picked out five numbers from the Q3 report and set each one against Q2 to see where the momentum is. The full report is on DNIB.com if you want every table.
411.6 million registrations
The domain base ended September at 411.6 million registrations across all TLDs, up 9.9 million on the previous quarter. The equivalent gain in Q2 was 9.1 million, so growth has sped up, not leveled off. Year over year, the base is up 8.7%, compared with 8.1% at the end of June.
Every major segment added names. ccTLDs had a stronger quarter than in the spring, growing 1.9% (up from 1.6%) to 151.4 million, and their annual growth rose from 3.6% to 4.6%. For anyone selling domains, hosting, or the services built on top of them, it’s encouraging to see a market of this size still gaining pace.
13.1 million new .com and .net registrations
.com is still the center of gravity, with 169.8 million registrations on its own. New .com and .net registrations reached 13.1 million in Q3, ahead of 12.7 million in Q2 and well up on 10.6 million a year ago. The combined base grew 1.9% on the quarter, edging up from 1.7%.
The one soft spot is retention. The preliminary combined renewal rate for .com and .net slipped to 74.3% from 75.2%. The move is small, and early estimates do get revised, but with so many new names coming in, it will be worth watching whether renewals keep pace next quarter.
32% year-over-year growth for nTLDs
New gTLDs are still the fastest-growing part of the market. They reached 56.6 million registrations, up 6.9% on the quarter and 32% on the year, and nTLDs now make up 13.7% of all registrations, compared with 13.2% in Q2.
The renewal numbers are less flattering. The combined nTLD renewal rate fell to 28.6% from 31.0%, so more than two-thirds of expiring names aren’t being renewed. Annual growth has also cooled slightly, from 34% in Q2. Anyone who has run a cheap first-year promotion will know the pattern: registrations climb quickly, and many of them disappear when full-price renewal comes around.
10.2 million .xyz domains
.xyz shows that tension more clearly than any other extension. It added roughly 1.7 million registrations in a single quarter, climbing from 8.5 million to 10.2 million and closing in on .uk (10.7 million) in the overall top 10. Its renewal rate sits at 17.8%.
.top moved the other way. It lost around 200,000 registrations to finish at 6.3 million, and its renewal rate dropped from 18.9% to 12.5%, the lowest in the top 10. Between them, the two extensions show how fast volume can arrive and how fast it can leave.
86.3% renewal rate for .org
At the loyal end of the scale, .org posted the highest renewal rate of any top-10 TLD at 86.3%, up from 77.1% in Q2. Legacy gTLDs as a group also renewed at a much higher rate, 79.8% against 67.2% the quarter before, even though their base barely grew (up 0.5% to 21.1 million).
That’s a large jump for one quarter, so we’d wait for Q4 before reading too much into it. It does fit a pattern that runs through the whole report, though: older extensions grow slowly and keep their customers, while newer ones bring in volume that is much less likely to stay.
What it means for the domain name industry
Overall, Q3 shows a domain market growing faster than it was three months ago, with both ccTLDs and .com contributing. For registrars and hosting providers, the more useful question may be which of these names will still be renewed next year, more than how many are being registered. A customer who keeps a .com or .org for a decade is worth far more than a promotional registration that lapses after 12 months, and the gap between those two kinds of business is widening.
Talk domains at CloudFest Global 2027
Every year, registries, registrars, and hosting providers from around the world meet at CloudFest Global to work through shifts like these and decide what to do about them. Find out more and register at cloudfest.com.
