What Is Verisign? Domain Glossary

Why it matters

Verisign sets the wholesale price for .com within a contract cap. Registrars then add their own price. Verisign also sponsors the Domain Name Industry Brief, a quarterly report with industry totals. Verisign does not sell domains to the public or arbitrate sales. A common mistake is contacting Verisign to get a domain from its owner. They cannot help. Use the registrar, a broker or the owner. It also helps to know that registrars, not Verisign, handle your account.

Source: investor.verisign.com

Where we use this term

Related terms

Registry: A registry is the authoritative master database of every domain name registered in one top-level domain. The company that runs it is the registry operator. The Domain Name System consults it to find the name servers for each name.
Price cap: The .com price cap is a limit in Verisign's contract with ICANN on how much the registry can raise its wholesale fee. It currently allows 7% a year in four of every six years.
.com: Dot-com is the most widely used top-level domain in the world. Verisign runs the .com registry, and it held about 166.6 million registrations in mid-2026.
Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB): The Domain Name Industry Brief is a quarterly report on global domain registrations by Verisign. It tracks growth, renewals, and extension trends across the industry.
Registry operator: The organization that runs the master database for one top-level domain and has a contract with ICANN or a country authority. It sets wholesale prices and rules for that extension, and it works through registrars.

All 205 terms

Why it matters

Where we use this term

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