The biggest registrar is also a domain investor favorite. There may be a causal relationship there.
This year’s survey of over 500 domain professionals shows that GoDaddy.com is the clear favorite registrar.
You probably didn’t need a survey to tell you that given that the company registers about half of all new domain names.
Nonetheless, 48% of survey respondents selected GoDaddy.com as their favorite registrar.
The next highest contender had just 8%.
Here are the top 5:
1. GoDaddy.com 48%
2. Name.com 8%
3. Fabulous 5%
4. Moniker, Dynadot 4%
Survey participants were also asked to rank the factors that matter to them when selecting a registrar. Here they are, in order of importance:
1. Price
2. Security of domains
3. Customer service
4. Account management tools
5. Ease of transferring domains between accounts
6. Value added services
7. What they do with expiring domains
If you consider the top five domain registrars, most of them will score well on these top factors.
This year the survey also asked if domain investors spread their domains across multiple registrars or primarily keep them at one.
77% of survey takers said they keep at least 80% of their domains at one registrar.
In the domain registration business, it would seem that winner takes all.
Paul Nicks says
did ballot-stuffing make up the remaining 30% or so?
Andrew Allemann says
There was an extremely long long tail of registrars getting 1-3% of the vote
M. Menius says
Over the years, there have been only a handful of reliable domain registrars. Godaddy’s domain management interface consistently outperforms the competitors for range of features, and ease of use. Their website hosting is also better than most.
Alfred says
I use eNom and can’t see why they don’t feature in the top five. Queries: I pay $9 for com’s etc.. anyone doing better? My main point: I invested over $150,000 in domains and am simply throwing them out now as this TLD expansion fiasco has made them worthless. Of course no one “in the business” is admitting this — so it is hard to find what people really think. Anyone else share my view?
ChuckWagen says
Al-
Coupon code freaks can do (slightly) better.
😉
Otherwise no, I don’t share your view. And I’m certainly not bothered by it.
ChuckWagen says
As for eNom, “account refill” is a royal PITA. Crappy interface too.
Alfred says
Thanks Chuckwagen for both yr comments and agree the eNom interface can be a bit clumsy (but it’s never failed me). Anyway, I’m curious.. Why does TLD proliferation not bother you? My sales (of .com names) have gone through the floor. It seems that all exclusivity has gone. Eg: Today MySite.hello, tomorrow someone else registers MySite.hi, next day they register hi.MySite, etc. The commodity value was based on exclusivity. MySite.com was really “MySite” in the central commerce domain. Now it’s meaningless (or it will be when we see http://google and http://facebook .. “.com” will just evaporate). N’est pas?
Andrew Allemann says
Alfred, if your .com sales are dropping it has nothing to do with new TLDs.
Alfred says
Thanks Andrew.. but please, can anyone give an explanation? Of course it is to do with new TLDs .. I’ve been in the game since the late 90’s. I’ve never seen this kind of drop, and I know of no other cause. If I bought an exclusive property next to Manhattan central park, and then they sold off the park to anyone & everyone, it WILL affect the value of my property. I would appreciate a reasoned and substantiated argument — genuinely. Otherwise all I’m hearing is denial, and lets not discuss this in the hope that it goes away. Thanks guys.
Andrew Allemann says
Alfred,
Let me give you a couple high level reasons.
First, at this time, 99.9% of internet users have no idea that new TLDs are coming. Probably 95%+ of domain registrants have no idea.
People that are starting a web site right now aren’t thinking “I’ll wait a year for their ideal TLD to come out before they launch my business.”
So even if you think new TLDs will put a dent in .com sales, it certainly wouldn’t be happening yet.
Second, we already have alternatives to .com. We’ve had .info and .biz and others for years. If people are substituting .com, they’ve been substituting it already.
You can make the argument that this time is different. A flood of new TLDs will FORCE people to pay attention. It’s fine if you believe that, but again I’d point to the timing to show that this isn’t the cause of your sudden drop in .com sales.
My belief is that for at least the first 5 years of new TLDs, .com values will increase. We all know that alternatives to .com or a country’s dominant ccTLD result in “leakage” to the .com. So even if you can start a biz on some other TLD, your preference is to own the same domain in .com or your ccTLD.
The alternative can be said for other TLDs such as .biz and .info. If you’re trying to sell a particular .info for $1,000 and someone can get the same SLD in .web for $50, which are they going to take? They’ll probably take the cheaper one.
Alfred says
I genuinely appreciate that Andrew… this does give me something to mull over. It’s a good spin and I don’t want to spoil it by arguing back but just a little — My view on .biz, .info and all the country codes etc was that dilution tended to bring people back to .com .. ie: confusion made .com more valuable as it stood out more. However, now there is no doubt http:MyName (as a TLD) is more valuable than http:MyName.com etc.
In another issue, there was TLD cornering — if someone wanted to create a major brand, then they bought http:MyName.* (ie: everything, all countries). I was stupid enough to do that and I don’t think anyone could argue that hasn’t been affected. The bottom line is that as an investor myself, I can no longer trust ICANN to protect my investment. Indeed, if I may make a prediction, I believe they’ve p*ssed in their own pot so badly, there will be a new registrar in a completely different medium – eg: a new type of browser with a different set of domains. If they can prove to be reliable, that’s where the money will go. But in the meantime, I hope your 5 years is right. If ICANN wanted easy money, it would have been better if they’d just upped the rereg costs. Silly boys.
Cheers
Andrew Allemann says
“However, now there is no doubt http:MyName (as a TLD) is more valuable than http:MyName.com etc. ”
I think there’s doubt about this. Time will tell.
Now I need to figure out how a this article led to this discussion 🙂
Alfred says
It’s a very good point and it would be nice to see (eg) http:MyName.com regain the high ground. ICANN still lost my confidence though. As for how we got here.. good question. Partly as I have been unable to find it discussed anywhere else. Cheers