DomainTools gets a facelift and new membership levels.
DomainTools launched a new interface today. It makes finding and using its vast array of tools much easier.
But the best part is that account credits are gone.
In the words of DomainTools:
“We’ve taken the most confusing pricing model ever conceived, and we’ve given it the axe.”
Amen.
The old system was based on “units” for various products. And the number of units required to order the same product depended on how you used it. For example, tracking one company’s registrations costs a lot more units than another company’s.
Now the system has been simplified to three membership levels. It’s a lot easier to understand and won’t require mid-year “top ups” of units.
Existing members are grandfathered into their current plan, but some might find it worthwhile to upgrade to one of the new plans based on their planned usage.
Ed says
How is that the best part? The price has doubled and certain features are now limited (e.g. Whois History).
Andrew Allemann says
@ Ed – I don’t necessarily agree that the prices have doubled.
Under my old plan I was spending about $300 a year and was only able to track two registrants with that. Under the new plan for about $500/year I can track 10.
So it really depends on what you’re using it for.
Tim Chen says
Thannks for the kind words Andrew. Believe it or not, the new launch started as a small project to ONLY migrate from a units to a dollar-based system, but morphed into a much bigger redesign, refactoring, and membership framework upgrade.
Harry says
Domaintools will be out of business as soon as Verisign amends their TOS to forbid the reselling of user data to third-parties.
All registrars should follow GoDaddy by blocking them from the root level. They are not interested in the domain community, and provide a useful service to spam operations.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Harry – VeriSign doesn’t control the whois data DomainTools collects for .com/.net. The whois data is managed by the registrars.