The Real Cost of a Domain Name: Registration vs Renewal (UK 2026)

When you buy a domain name, the price on the button is rarely the price you end up living with. The headline figure — sometimes 1p or £1 for the first year — is an introductory teaser. What actually matters is the renewal price: the amount you pay every year afterwards, for as long as you own the name. Gravity Host doesn't play the teaser game. We're not the cheapest registrar on the internet, and we're nowhere near the most expensive — we sit in the fair middle with one promise the bargain-basement and the big brands both struggle to make: the price stays the same every year. This guide shows the real numbers (June 2026) so you can judge for yourself.

How domain pricing actually works

Every domain extension has a wholesale price set by the registry that runs it — Nominet for .uk and .co.uk, Verisign for .com, and so on. Registrars pay that wholesale price and add a margin. That's normal and fair. The difference is in how honestly it's presented. A very low first-year price gets you to sign up; the real money is then made on renewals, when you're far less likely to move. Once your website, email and business cards all point at a domain, switching feels risky — so a quiet annual renewal of £15, £18 or £22 is easy to wave through.

What a domain really costs (June 2026)

Here's what a UK customer actually pays at a range of registrars — the real all-in price, first year and renewal, for the two extensions most British businesses use. Gravity Host's prices are all-inclusive; the others are their standard rates, with overseas prices converted from US dollars.

Registrar	.co.uk — first year	.co.uk — renewal/yr	.com — first year	.com — renewal/yr
Gravity Host	£10	£10	£15	£15
Krystal	£9.59	£9.59	£14.39	£14.39
Namecheap	~£7.10	~£9.50	~£14.20	~£17.50
IONOS	£1.20	£12.00	£1.20	£18.00
123-reg	~£0.95	£14.39	~£5.99	£22.79
GoDaddy	£0.01	£15.59	£0.01	£22.79

Standard published rates as of June 2026; overseas prices converted from US dollars and will move with exchange rates. Cloudflare (not shown) sells .com at cost — around £8 — but does not register .co.uk. Figures change over time — always check the renewal price, not the first-year price, before you buy.

Where Gravity Host sits: fair and consistent

Look down the renewal columns rather than the first-year ones, because renewal is what you pay almost every year. A few honest observations:

• On a .com, our £15 renewal is cheaper than Namecheap, IONOS, GoDaddy and 123-reg — the big mainstream names all renew higher, two of them over £22.
• On a .co.uk, our £10 is mid-table — a little above the very cheapest, and several pounds below GoDaddy and 123-reg.
• A couple of providers sit just under us — fellow UK host Krystal, which prices flat like we do, and Cloudflare's at-cost .com — while the teaser registrars renew far higher. We're never the dearest, and never the teaser-then-shock option.

That's the point. You can always find someone a pound cheaper on a given extension, and you can always find someone far dearer. Gravity Host aims for a fair, consistent price that stays competitive year after year — not a headline that lures you in and then climbs.

The renewal trap, in plain numbers

Because you keep a business domain for years, the fair comparison is the total over time. Take a .com over five years — first year plus four renewals:

• Gravity Host: £15 + four × £15 = £75
• Namecheap: ~£14.20 + four × ~£17.50 = ~£84
• GoDaddy: £0.01 + four × £22.79 = ~£91
• 123-reg: ~£5.99 + four × £22.79 = ~£97

The eye-catching 1p ends up the dearest of the lot. Over five years a .com costs roughly £9 to £22 more at those registrars than it does with us — and that's before any mid-term price rise on their side. Only providers that price flat, like Krystal or at-cost Cloudflare, land near or just below us — which is exactly the company we'd rather keep.

Our promise: the same price next year

Gravity Host does the opposite of the teaser model. Our renewal price is the same as our registration price — £10 a year for a .co.uk, £15 for a .com, £18 for .org or .net, £13 for .eu — and it stays there. We only ever raise a domain price if the registry itself raises the wholesale cost to us; when Nominet or Verisign adjusts their fees we pass that through and no more. There's no "first-year only" asterisk, no automatic annual increase, and no loyalty penalty for staying put. For a business that values predictable costs, that certainty is worth more than a one-off penny deal.

"But isn't somewhere cheaper?"

On some extensions, yes — and we'd rather be straight about it. Krystal, another UK host, prices a little under us on the same honest flat model. Namecheap's .co.uk renewal sits just below ours (though its .com works out dearer once converted). And Cloudflare sells .com domains at cost — around £8, with no markup and no renewal hike. If the lowest possible number on one extension is all that matters, those are worth knowing about.

Each comes with trade-offs to weigh. Cloudflare only registers a narrow set of extensions — it does not sell new .co.uk domains at all — and makes you use its own nameservers, so you can't keep your DNS where you like it. Namecheap is a large overseas company where support is a ticket queue, not a UK phone call. With Gravity Host your domain sits alongside your hosting and email in one British account, with free WHOIS privacy on supported extensions, easy DNS management, and real UK support. For most small businesses, a fair flat price with everything in one place beats chasing the last pound across separate providers.

How to avoid the renewal trap (anywhere you buy)

• Ignore the first-year price. Find the renewal price before you commit — it's the number you'll pay almost every year.
• Check for automatic increases. Phrases like "renews at the then-current rate" mean the price can rise whenever the registrar chooses.
• Watch for extras at checkout. A headline that looks suspiciously low sometimes has charges added at the final step — always look at the total before you pay.
• Keep control of your domain. Make sure you can manage DNS and transfer the name out freely — your domain should never be held hostage to a hosting plan.

Simple, stable, and all in one place

A domain is the foundation of your online identity, and it should cost a fair, predictable amount year after year — not a penny today and a shock tomorrow. That's how Gravity Host prices them: not the cheapest, not the dearest, just consistent — sitting neatly alongside UK NVMe hosting, free SSL, daily backups and business email. Register a new name or transfer one in, and the price you see today is the price you'll still be paying next year.