.icu pricing
| Term | Price |
|---|---|
| First year | Intro offer$0.99Standard first year |
| Renewal | $14.99 |
| Transfer | $14.99 |
The story behind .icu
I See You, then the world did: the .icu story
A swing that made everyone look twice
Start with the jolt: by early 2021, reporting showed .icu’s footprint concentrated in China, sliding from a peak near 6.3 million domains to about 2.5 million in under a year. The same chart that showed eye‑popping scale also showed how quickly promotion‑heavy cohorts can churn at renewal time. For you, that arc said two things at once - the string can command outsized attention in a single market, and the lasting signal comes after the surge, when steady users stay and build. And because the letters read I See You, the name itself kept signaling visibility even as the zone found its level.
From green light to new hands
Roll back to April 2015, when IANA delegated .icu to the DNS root - the internet’s master list of top‑level domains - with One.com A/S recorded as the sponsor. Delegation is the checkpoint where a new gTLD clears ICANN program tests and can be served by the global DNS, so names can actually resolve. That entry gave .icu a real address space and a baseline in the public record.
Fast‑forward to February 2018, when Shortdot SA appears as the registry operator of record. The registry operator sets policy and works with registrars; a change like this is logged so buyers know who runs the namespace they’ll build on.
Opening day reach, built for scale
ShortDot opened Sunrise on April 24, 2018 and moved .icu into General Availability on May 29, 2018. Sunrise is the rights‑holder head start; General Availability is when anyone can register. The registry said more than 100 registrars in over 30 countries were ready on day one, and confirmed CentralNic as its backend service provider - the engine that runs the registry’s EPP, zone generation, and DNS glue.
It was a clean demo of how an event‑driven brand could point a short, memorable string at a real‑world promotion and be understood instantly. That helped frame .icu as a straight‑talking choice for campaigns that need recall on first sight.
Real apps, clear signals
So the story lands like this: delegated in 2015, transferred to Shortdot in 2018, launched with global retail reach, surged and reset in a major market, and now powers visible campaigns and apps.