The fees for registering .vn domain names were lowered on 1 January 2017 Vietnamâs Ministry of Finance announced.
Currently registrars are unable to charge fees higher than the Ministry of Finance stipulates, with fees transferred to the .vn registry, VNNIC, and registrars are unable to receive commissions of above 30%.
However on 1 January it all changed according to media reports such as in VietnamNet. From this date registrars wonât receive commissions, but can set up domain registration and maintenance fees higher than stipulated to cover expenses and make profits. However, the fees must not be higher than the ceiling levels.
The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has lowered the registry fee to make .vn more competitive with TLDs such as .com.
According to Do Quang Trung, head of VNNICâs HCMC Branch, the policy will create competition in prices among registration agencies and eliminate price gaps between national domain name .vn and international domain names reported VietnamNet.
The fees for .vn domain name stipulated in Circular 208 are close to, or even lower, than the fees for TLDs such as .com or .net.
The floor fee level set by MOF for someone to register a .vn domain is VND200,000 ($8.80), while the annual maintenance fee is VND350,000.
The third-level domain names registered under 2LDs such as edu.vn, gov.vn and info.vn have registration and maintenance fees of VND120,000 and VND150,000, respectively. The third-level domain name â name.vn has very low fee of VND30,000.
The current fees for registering and using â.vnâ domain name for the first year offered by some biggest registration agents is VND830,000. The fee for maintaining the domain name in the next years is over VND400,000.
There are currently approximately one million .vn domain names registered with three-quarters (74%) registered to individuals and the remainder to organisations.