Breaking: Identity Digital wins .us domain registry contract

The U.S. government has awarded the .us registry contract to Identity Digital, replacing GoDaddy Registry. The transition will move roughly two million domains to a new operator, a change that touches every .us registrant.

The contract change is a loss for GoDaddy, which took over the registry through its Neustar acquisition. At a $6.50 wholesale price, the .us book represents about $13 million a year in high-margin revenue, though first-year registrations are often discounted. GoDaddy also lost the .co contract last year, so this is a second registry leaving its portfolio.

For registrants, a registry change is usually invisible. Domains keep working, renewals continue, and DNS and WHOIS operations move to the new backend. The risk is in what the new operator changes: pricing, renewal terms, or registration policies. Identity Digital operates hundreds of TLDs and runs the backends for .ai, .au, and .io, so it has the operational record to manage a country-code registry.

The commercial logic for Identity Digital is clear. A government contract provides a stable, multi-year revenue stream and a base of two million domains. For GoDaddy, the loss is more about momentum than money; $13 million is small relative to its overall revenue, but registry margins are high and hard to replace.

What is still unknown is the transition timeline and the terms of the new contract. The U.S. Department of Commerce oversees the .us registry, and the move will need to be executed without disrupting two million domains. Registrants should watch for notices from their registrars about the change, but there is no indication yet of any policy shifts.