New entrants promise great features but face a challenging landscape.
Over the past five years, it seems like the number of aftermarket domain name platforms has been shrinking. That’s largely because GoDaddy acquired two of them (Uniregistry and Dan) and subsequently shut them down.
However, a handful of new entrants in recent months seek to replace some of the best features of these shuttered platforms, giving domain investors more choice in where they sell their domains.
On this week’s podcast, I interviewed Sam Dennis, founder of DomainEasy.
And just a few months ago, Jeffrey Gabriel of Saw.com was on the show, talking about his company’s new sales platform.
While just launched, both platforms have been in the works for a while. Both seem to emulate some of the best features of Uniregistry’s self-brokering platform.
Another entrant is Aftermarket.com, which acquired domain.io. (At the time I’m writing this story, a Cloudflare error prevents people from visiting the site. I will update with a link when it’s working again.)
It’s good to see competition in this space. Competition is what pushes the industry forward.
Yet all of these platforms face an uphill battle thanks to a savvy move GoDaddy made a year ago.
When GoDaddy changed its commissions at the beginning of 2023, it added a stiff penalty for people who don’t point their names to its platforms: commissions are 67% higher. Sellers pay 25% instead of 15%.
While GoDaddy generates lots of sales from its distribution network, these competitors don’t have that sort of reach. Sales are dependent on people typing the domain and visiting the lander. For people who sell through Afternic, the higher cost of sales there might dissuade them from trying new platforms.
Atom introduced a bit of a workaround this year, at least for lower-cost names. If a Premium name sells on Afternic rather than Atom, it covers the difference up to $300. Atom also is trying to solve part of the distribution problem through marketing, and some of these new competitors hope to do the same.
To take a bite out of the aftermarket like Uniregistry and Dan did, these platforms must convince sellers that they add enough value to overcome the Afternic commission penalty.
For the industry’s sake, I hope they can add enough value for this to happen.
Hi
folks are seeing the money to be made from commissions on domain sales, so yeah, they want a piece of that dough-ski.
sure, some may start with 0 fee, but after they build a customer ala word of mouth base, then expect them start charging too.
and of course, once the dollars start to flow, then they’ll have cash to compete against those same domainers in auction bids for the premiums.
It is quality over quantity…
The shitty ones that have poor customer service and charge too much will die….
Let the competition begins
With the FTC now being more likely to get involved in antitrust issues, I wonder if Godaddy’s competitor acquisition and commission penalties could be tested with a lawsuit.
Lookout for Daaz.com
GoDaddy might be putting itself in danger of getting sued by FTC for being and acting like a monopoly due to forcing domain sellers to use GoDaddy/Afternic name servers by threatening/penalizing higher fees if you don’t?
We (GBM Domains) are one of the new platforms trying to bring innovation and reduced costs to the domain trading space.
It’s definitely a challenging market to be in, but we hope that domain investors and brokers will see value in our platform, given we have dramatically lower fees and instant payments on sales.
Completely agree with one of the other comments re: customers service and commission fees being critically important!