--- title: Easy start, a lease that begins at half the monthly payment url: https://namegarage.com/blog/easy-start-leases author: Namegarage date: '2026-09-04' description: Lease-to-own plans can now start at half the regular payment for the first three or six months, then step up. Here is the exact schedule, what it costs, and why some terms do not offer it. --- # Easy start, a lease that begins at half the monthly payment **Clarification — 2026-10-25.** The calculator now labels the fixed costs as payment-plan and Easy Start surcharges and shows the total to own. A longer plan does not start accruing interest after a fee-free opening period. Stripe processes current card plans; it does not hold the domain in escrow. Access follows confirmed first payment and seller verification. Historical Escrow.com plans keep their agreed provider and terms. See the [current Terms of Sale](/terms/) for new card agreements, including missed payments, notice, domain return and payment-retention exceptions. A lease-to-own plan has had two dials for a while: the term, and the down payment. It now has a third, which we call the payment shape. The default shape is the one you know, the same amount every month. The new one is **easy start**: you pay half the regular monthly for the first three or six months, and the schedule steps up after that to make up the difference. It is for a specific situation. You want the name now, you can carry a payment now, but the full monthly is a few months away. A new project that has not started billing yet, a budget that opens next quarter. Easy start reduces the amount due at the start. Domain access follows confirmed first payment and seller verification. ## What it costs, exactly Take a $2,400 name on a twelve-month plan with nothing down. The standard shape is $200 a month for twelve months, $2,400 total. With a three-month easy start it becomes: | Months | Payment | |---|---| | 1 to 3 | $100 | | 4 to 11 | $236 | | 12 | $242 | | Total | $2,430 | The $30 difference is the easy-start fee. It is 10% of what you deferred, and nothing else. You put off $100 a month for three months, that is $300, and 10% of $300 is $30. The fee is spread over the catch-up months along with the deferred amount, so nothing is due up front and nothing is added at the end. The last payment is a couple of dollars higher than the others because we split in whole dollars and true up in the final month. Every plan has always done that; we now say so on the checkout screen instead of leaving it to the table. The same logic holds with a down payment. A $6,000 name over eighteen months with 20% down is $1,200 down and $266 a month, with $278 to finish; the site shows that as $1,466 due today, the down payment plus the first month. Add a six-month easy start and it is $1,200 down, $133 a month for six months, $340 a month for eleven, and $342 to finish, for a total of $6,080, with $1,333 due today. The fee is $80, again 10% of the $798 you deferred. The down payment carries no fee in either shape. The base payment-plan surcharge stays fixed for the selected term and down payment. Easy Start adds its separate surcharge on the deferred opening amounts. Both costs are included in the displayed payments and total to own. ## Where you will find it On a domain page, the payment shape sits next to the term and down-payment selectors in the Pay-monthly panel. It appears only when at least one easy-start option qualifies for the term and down payment you have chosen. Pick one and the breakdown table shows every band: what is due today, the reduced months, the catch-up months, the final payment, and the fee as its own line. If you use a screen reader, the spoken summary reads every band too, not just the first one. The offer form has the same selector. If you make an offer on a payment plan, you can make it on an easy-start plan, and the shape travels with the offer the way the [term and down payment already do](/blog/your-payment-plan-survives-the-counter). A counter from us keeps your easy start. Accept a counter, and the checkout link carries the shape you agreed to. Bundles work as well. The reduced payment is calculated on each name's share of the bundle price, not on the bundle total, because that is how the allocated schedule is built: one entry per name. This matters at the margins. A bundle price that would qualify as one number can split into shares whose reduced payments, added together, fall under our minimum, and in that case the option is simply not shown. We would rather not offer it than offer it and refuse it at checkout. The agreed provider collects the schedule you confirm. Current card plans use Stripe; historical Escrow.com plans retain their agreed provider. ## When a counter changes the price Every rule below is a function of the price, so a counter can move a plan out of easy-start territory. In the example above, the $100 reduced payment sits exactly on our $100 minimum; a counter a hundred dollars lower would push it under. When that happens we do not quietly turn your plan into a standard one. The counter says, in the message and in the email, that easy start is no longer available at that price, and the plan it carries is stated in full before you answer. This is the same rule we [applied to the terms a few days ago](/blog/both-sides-see-the-terms): the shape of a deal changes only when someone changes it on purpose, and when it changes, both sides are told. ## Why some terms do not offer it You will notice that easy start is not on every term, and that a bigger down payment can sometimes remove it rather than add it. That is deliberate, so here are the rules in plain words. - **A three-month easy start needs a term of twelve months or more. A six-month one needs eighteen or more.** A short term with a long ramp serves no real need and creates the largest possible window for the problem described below. - **The reduced payment must still be at least $100.** That is the floor we hold the regular monthly to when deciding which terms a name can carry at all, and the easy-start payment has to clear it too. Half of a small monthly can fall under it. This is the rule a large down payment or a long term can trip, because both shrink the monthly the reduced payment is half of. - **Your payments must always be worth at least fair rent for the name.** A lease hands you full use of the domain from the first payment. If a plan let someone pay less than the name would rent for, use it for months, and walk away, that would be a cheap rental dressed up as a purchase, and the name might come back to us with a reputation it did not have before. We set fair rent at 1.5% of the price per month. At every month of the plan, what you have paid so far must be at least that many months of rent. - **What you pay on day one must cover two months of rent.** The down payment plus the first reduced payment, together. Escrow.com has a grace period for a missed payment, and this keeps the plan honest through it. With nothing down, the last two rules combine to say the reduced payment alone must cover two months of rent. Only twelve- and eighteen-month terms can clear that. Every longer term, twenty-four months to sixty, needs a real down payment before easy start appears on it. The plan that would be riskiest for both of us, the longest term with nothing down and reduced early payments, cannot be reached at all. We are not going to pretend this is generous to everyone. A buyer who wanted six months of reduced payments on a three-year plan with nothing down will not get it here. What they will get is a plan whose every number is on the page before they commit, a fee they can verify with a calculator, and a shape that survives negotiation. That seemed like the right trade.