Frakes to the rescue?
Domain name industry veteran Jothan Frakes is set to take over the helm of Moniker as interim CEO later this month.
Frakes will have a tough challenge ahead of him. Moniker has been in a tailspin ever since it switched from its legacy system to a reseller platform under the ownership of KeyDrive.
The new system was confusing to users. Worse, migration errors led to domain names missing from accounts and incorrect account balances. Support and communication during the transition breakdown were abysmal.
At the end of May 2014, just before the switch, Moniker had 1.089 million .com domain names under management. At the end of May 2015, Moniker had just 0.687 million .com domains under management. (It’s total with other extensions is obviously higher.)
I imagine the first goal for Moniker and Frakes at this point is to just stem the losses. Moniker still has a sizable number of domains under management, and it might be able to convince customers to not move them when they come up for renewal. It might also be able to convince some remaining customers to increase business with them once the ship is righted.
As for people that have already moved out, I don’t think there’s much the company can do to win them back, assuming the defectors have found another registrar they’re happy with.
There’s no word yet on how Frakes role will affect his involvement with NamesCon/DomainFest.
News of Frakes’ hiring was first reported by Domain Incite.
Moved 800 names out 60 left soon to move out last batch
Rip moniker, no reason to come back, cheaper, more efficient choices aka uniregistry
To little to late, took them over a year to get their sh@t straight
In fairness, I think Konstantinos beat me to this one by a few hours, though I hadn’t read his story when I posted mine.
Moved 2500 names with 500 more to go, Jothan is a good guy but i dont think he can save moniker. Moniker went from being loved to being hated, even if moniker would be giving domains away for free i would still never do business with them ever again.
Frakes will be a hero no matter what. He has nothing to lose. Moniker was completely destroyed, all aspects of it. Now anything will be an improvement. Too much damage has been done. There isn’t anything that can fix. I lost so many hours of my life that I can never get back due to their mess. And you cannot make up for that.
I didn’t think was Moniker was even “alive”. I moved domains out of there years ago.
Awesome news, congrats to Jothan!
Don’t worry about the naysayers — people also said Yahoo! was dead when Marissa Mayer took over. $15+ billion in market cap later, she’s proved that a smart turnaround CEO can make quite a difference. Moniker is an interesting challenge for sure, and Jothan is one of the most experienced and best connected people in the domain industry; I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do with it.
The first thing Jothan should do is 1) develop a useful interface, like Uniregistry and 2) Get real customer support like Uniregistry and Enom have.
Right now, the Moniker interface is horrific. It’s a crapshoot as to when customer service will respond, or what hours people answer phones.
When that’s in place, issue a sincere,. heartfelt apology for the mess that Moniker was. And you might have a shot again in the registrar business–not with me. I’m never returning. But maybe with someone. 🙂 People do forget. A superior product/service helps them forget faster. Make something worth using to prove Moniker isn’t the disaster that Moniker currently is.
As all of you know, I created the concept of Moniker in 1999 with an emphasis on best customer service, security, interface and user UI, domain sales and monetization integration, Whois Privacy, etc, and I had the best employees who wore the Moniker brand on their chest with pride and excitement!
It still hurts to see what two companies after me have done with this once thriving industry leading business, however, if anyone can stop the bleeding and build back the reputation its Jothan! He knows the industry and knows how the business is supposed to be run and he worked on it with us while at Oversee.
Keep an open mind everyone. You never know who the next industry leader will be and who will fall from the top for reasons beyond their control.
I hope that my friends at Key-Systems will make the right investment and commitment back in the business and in Jothan to show that they can turn Moniker around for the better.
Best of luck to you Jothan and I am here to support you should you need me. Moniker had the best reputation in the industry for many years and it can come back.
There’s no way it can come back. Its reputation is crap and all the negativity and complaints are forever indexed in search engines and the horrendously terrible platform is far beyond repair even with possible improvements and good support. I’m sure many of us who left in disgust would not return including myself even if they gave away free domains. Moniker Sucks.
Congrats to Jothan, they could not have picked a more solid individual to take the wheel. Was the right decision. If anyone can bring it back he’s the guy.
Congratulations to Jothan! Great choice. Great challenge. I’m sure he will turn things for the better!
I moved all of my domains out of Moniker. … And I will NEVER go back to them.
What a horror show that was.
It appears Jothan is no longer CEO according to the renewal emails. It also appears Moniker is back to its old games of renewing domain names in it systems but at the same time listing those same renewed names (that it does not own) on snapnames so it can make a quick profit..