The Freename Forum

At WordPress.com, we believe in building for the long term. That’s why we’re introducing 100-Year Domains and relaunching our 100-Year Plan—two powerful ways to secure your digital legacy for generations to come.

https://wordpress.com/blog/100-year-domains-plans/

$ 2,000 registration fee for a .com, .net, org or .blog domain for 100 years or registration fee starting at $ 5 for any domain of the 22,000 Freename TLDs for eternity.

Domainer wrote:$ 2,000 registration fee for a .com, .net, org or .blog domain for 100 years or registration fee starting at $ 5 for any domain of the 22,000 Freename TLDs for eternity.

This should not be a difficult decision.

Yes, that clearly shows the great advantage of Freename.

The US company Automattic Inc., known for its blogging service wordpress.com, is moving a little closer to infinity: for a one-off US$ 2,000, domain names can be registered for a whole century in advance. In the past, such offers have not always ended well.

Whereas in Germany, registration contracts for domain names are usually renewed automatically unless the owner cancels them in due time, in the USA they have to be explicitly renewed. This leads to repeated mishaps in which even world-famous companies such as Microsoft or renowned daily newspapers such as the Washington Post forget to renew their domains on time. Back in 2004, the domain registrar Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) therefore enticed its customers with a very special offer: the registration contract for a .com domain would be renewed again and again after the maximum permissible period of 10 years set by ICANN until 100 years had passed. The customer had to pay the US$ 999 due at the time in advance. Automattic is also taking up this offer: “But with our 100-Year Domains, we start with a 10-year registration and handle renewals automatically by adding a year to registration annually so there is always at least a nine-year buffer,” it says on the website. The one-hundred-year registration offer extends to domain names below the .com, .org and .net extensions as well as the .blog belonging to Automattic. Automattic charges a one-off fee of US$ 2,000 (approx. EUR 1,918) for this, with no annual renewal fees.

The offer is part of a 100-year plan aimed at long-term digital preservation. Anyone willing to pay a total of US$ 38,000 (approx. EUR 36,451) will receive, in addition to the domain, hosting of the online presence, a specially numbered escrow account for smooth administration and data storage according to the “Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe” (LOCKSS) principle in at least three separately mirrored data centers to ensure access and redundancy in the event of outages or disasters. In addition, websites in the 100-year plan have active snapshot backups in the Wayback Machine and Wayback Linkfixer plugin to redirect any broken links on a website to the current link in the Internet Archive. Even a customized metal and glass poster to commemorate the commitment to the future is not missing.

However, practice shows that such offers do not convince everyone. For natural persons, it is likely to be less interesting because there are biological reasons for not living to see the end of the contract. Companies, on the other hand, are likely to want to keep the option open to react flexibly to future developments. And who wants to rule out the possibility that domains will only cost a few cents in 30 or 40 years' time? Another economic consideration is that nobody knows whether wordpress.com will still exist in 100 years' time. The scandal-ridden US registrar Epik, which launched “Forever Domains” in 2018 at a price of US$ 420, has since withdrawn the offer; it had also reserved the right to withdraw at any time in return for a refund of the fees. This is unlikely to win the trust of customers. Ultimately, however, the matter is simple: customers alone decide whether to accept the service - or not.

Further information can be found at:
https://wordpress.com/blog/100-year-domains-plans/