Why do individuals, organisations and companies renew their domain name? And why do some cancel their domain name after a year, while others keep it for many years?
For registrars and registries, such as DNS Belgium, these are relevant questions. Understanding renewal behaviour can help registries maintain a high renewal rate. A high renewal rate, in turn, leads to stable and predictable revenue, clear budgets and guaranteed high‑quality support of registrars.
That's why, together with nine other European ccTLD registries, we participated in a large‑scale study. For .be, Maarten Bosteels, R&D manager at DNS Belgium, and Thomas Daniels, a researcher at DNS Belgium and KULeuven, analyzed the data. Below are some of their key insights.
Why do we (not) renew domain names?
The study analysed more than 40 million domain names. A general trend is that domain names are renewed less often than in the past. When we look at the factors that determine whether domain holders renew their domain name or not, we see the following:
New domain names are renewed less often
A one‑year‑old domain name is, on average, less likely to be renewed. This is true for almost all ccTLDs. Discounts in the first year of registration can play a role, but apart from this, it is clear that a proportion of new registrations serve a temporary or one‑off purpose.
The older the domain, the higher the likelihood of renewal
The opposite is equally true. Long‑standing domain names are renewed more often. People who have invested in a domain for several years are less inclined to cancel it after a certain period.
Location matters
Domain name registrants established in the country or region of the registry renew their domain name significantly more often than those based abroad. For .be domain names, this means that registrants located in Belgium renew their .be domain more often than .be holders outside of Belgium.
'A domain name that has been transferred is renewed less frequently under .be than under most other ccTLDs. This may be due to our different transfer procedure. We need to investigate this.'
Strong .be-zone
The fact that local registrations show higher renewal rates on average underlines the importance of a strong national domain zone. Previous internal studies already showed that within Belgium a .be domain is associated with reliability, quality and trust. The findings of this Task Force appear to confirm this conclusion, which is reassuring.
By actively contributing to this study, DNS Belgium aims to gain insights that will help strengthen the .be zone. We also hope to support a better understanding of the European domain name market as a whole.
View all research results
Would you like to learn more about the renewal behavior of domain name holders? View all research results on the CENTR website.
With this article we support the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.