Support Start > Billing and Account Management > Billing and Payment > Web Hosting Cancellation Fees > Abandon Domain Name

When we register a domain name on your behalf as part of our hosting service, you can usually “abandon” that domain name without any further fees when you cancel the hosting service — even if it’s before the expiration date of the domain name.

You can “abandon” a domain name if:

• It ends with .com, .net, .org, or any other domain name extension that does not cost any more than a “.com” domain name (currently $16.92 or less); and
• You’ve “abandoned” fewer than three domain names in the previous 90 days.

You won’t be able to abandon a domain name if the retail price for that domain name registration is more than the price of a “.com” domain name, or you’ve already abandoned three other domain names in the previous 90 days.

In those situations, you’ll be charged a prorated fee to cover the remainder of the most recent domain registration year we provided. (You then own the domain name until it expires, of course.) For example, if you cancel your web hosting service after nine months, you would be charged 25% of the annual domain name only fee to cover the remaining three months of domain name registration we’ve provided.

Why can’t I abandon all domain names?

The central domain name registry always sells domain names in one year increments, and we have to buy them in one year increments. It isn’t possible for us to get a partial refund if you stop using it partway through the year.

If you buy hosting service from us and the domain name doesn’t cost any more than a .com domain name, we ignore that cost as a small loss if you abandon it. The hosting fees you paid will usually cover it, or come close.

But if you choose a premium domain name that costs more money, or you abandon more than three domain names, that cost adds up, so the fee covers the remainder of our original cost to buy them.

Why are you charging cancellation fees when your page says you won’t?!

These aren’t cancellation fees — they’re fees for the annual domain name registration, which almost every other hosting company charges you when you first sign up for it.

We’re different: We don’t charge you for the domain name registration when you first add a domain name for hosting service. Instead, when you initially sign up for hosting for one of those domain names, you’ll see a message saying something like “Note that .biz domain names can’t be “abandoned” without a fee before they expire”.

In no case are you worse off than with another company, and in many cases you’re better off, because we let you cancel a small number of domain names without paying for the remainder of the domain name registration.