Domain auctions scheduled for weekend will end starting July 8.
Domain auction service SnapNames is back online after a weekend outage. The site went down starting last Thursday at 10:30 PM EDT and just went live again within the past half hour.
Fortunately for SnapNames it was a holiday weekend, so some buyers were probably on the lake rather than in front of the computer (but perhaps SnapNames’ web team was on vacation too). The company is rescheduling auctions that were scheduled to end on July 4-7 to end on July 8 or later. Although the company can reschedule these auctions, it lost out on revenue from expired domains at registrars that don’t have exclusive agreements with a drop service.
Site outages are not unheard of in the domain name industry, although this one was longer than any I’ve witnessed. Throughout the weekend SnapNames had a notice on its web site about the outage. An exact cause has not been disclosed.
Customers with questions or concerns may contact SnapNames [email protected] or (800) 385-4075 (toll-free in the U.S.) or 503 241-8547 (outside the U.S.).
Rob Sequin says
Bad management?
Bad planning?
Bad hardware?
Bad software?
Bad for business that’s for sure.
What was their cost of lost business and cost of harm to their brand?
Could it have been prevented? If so, would the failsafe plan cost less than the failure?
What’s it cost to pay nine engineers to work day and night over the July 4th weekend.
Who’s running snapnames are are they to blame?
Steve M says
“Stuff” happens in business; no less (if not more so) in high-tech industries operating on and/or via the Internet.
As an innovation leader in our fast-moving and ever-changing (or die) industry, even a great company like Snapnames should not be expected to be exempt from such happenings and occurrences.
Fact is, the only companies that never make mistakes or have bad things happen to them are companies not long among the living.
The long term effects of this outage on them?
Zip. Zero. Nada.
Andrew says
It certainly seemed like an excessive outage, and I’m sure someone at SnapNames is taking heat for it and having a very bad day(s).
Since we don’t know what happened, it’s tough to say what would have prevented it.
Rob Sequin says
Right. We don’t know what happened.
They always give me good customer service but to let a leader in our industry just give us an “Oh well, we’re sorry” as a response is not satisfactory to me.
We had to put up with that crap at namewinner and pool and now it’s okay for Snapnames to have this major failure occur with obviously no failsafe plan?
So Steve, this is just a bit more than a mistake. This is a major failure and if it can happen once, it can happen again.
I say all this because I want snap to be better and I expect them to be better.
Andrew says
I guess the real losers here are people who took the time to backorder expired domains at Snap that are not with partner registrars. It was wasted time.
Perhaps Snap will tell us what happened. But if it was a security breach they’re still working on, then I wouldn’t expect them to.
Rob Sequin says
Go for it. You’re good at working the phone. Give Nelson or Kjel a call and see if you can get the scoop.
They owe all of us an explanation and it’s our job to demand one.
Too Many Secrets says
@Andrew, I can tell you from experience of running data centers, that there is no excuse for being down for four days.
This was not simply a hardware problem, network attack etc. Something much more ominous happened.
@Rob, you’re right, it will probably happen again.
– Richard
Page Howe says
Re: some buyers were probably on the lake rather than in front of the computer (but perhaps SnapNames’ web team was on vacation too).
i think was a cheap shot, there nothing about the effort of the team i can complain about. i think a company cant run from its reputation over time and snapnames has been consistently strong for years, and years and thousands; if not millions of auctions.
no one knows that they lost business better than they do but i dont think the team was on vacation this weekend, in fact im guessing the opposite. i think how thay have acted over time should be taken into consideration.
Page Howe
Stephen Douglas says
Nefarious competitors are probably behind this evil deed. j/k
Strangely, I was at a party with one of the Snapnames employees on July 4th. Neither of us had any idea of a problem. I make over $2,000 a month from selling domains on Snap… I believe in them. Whatever happened, probably was a result of….xxxxxxxx
And the effect it will have on me continuing to use Snapnames as my main domain auction site…. nada, zip, zero.
Snapnames rocks.
Andrew says
@ Page – that wasn’t meant to be a cheap shot. I’m serious that many of the people from its web team were probably on vacation/out of town when it happened because of the holiday. It’s not like they could have anticipated this.
page howe says
understood