AI-powered domain appraisal system claims to be based on 20 years of auction data, but doesn’t show its work.
This is part of Domain Name Wire’s review of automated domain appraisal tools. See all reviews: Estibot, GoDaddy, Atom, Appraise.net, GoExpired, Dynadot, NameWorth, Saw, Appraise.software, Humbleworth.
Humbleworth is a lesser-known appraisal tool. It offers AI-powered domain valuations with three prices: an auction price, a marketplace price, and a brokerage price. It also provides a range for each level.
For our analysis, we looked at the mid-range “marketplace” number.
It provides no justification for its values, only saying they are based on 20+ years of auction sales data.
Let’s see how it stacks up.
Two word brandables
We evaluated two domain names in this category: MakeMatter.com, which sold for $15,000, and PressBridge.com, which sold for $5,000.
Both of these domains are in the sweet spot for two dictionary word brandables of $3,000-$15,000. Yes, some sellers hold out for higher amounts, and their data will show these domains sell for much more. But looking at overall sale data, it’s reasonable for an appraisal system to return anything in this price range for this type of domain.
Humbleworth appraised MakeMatter.com for $2,260 and PressBridge.com for $8,930. Neither of these is particularly offensive, although MakeMatter came in toward the low end of our appraisal platform tests.
It’s worth noting that the auction valuation for MakeMatter.com is $55, even though Andrew bought it for $847 in a GoDaddy auction.
To its credit, we weren’t able to trip Humbleworth up with our unregistered domain test. It said CloudToaster.com is only worth $141.
One word, high value .com
Hubleworth seemed all over the place with valuations.
It said Dragonfly.com has a marketplace price of $77,200, which is well below the wholesale value of this domain. At least it valued Firefly.com in a similar range at $138,000.
We tried Midnight.com, which sold for $1.15 million this year, and it said it was worth $3.25 million.
Again, high-end domains are hard to value. Appraisal tools should avoid pegging exact values to them.
Popular ccTLDs
We ran a solid one word .io, and a plural .ai of lesser quality through Humbleworth’s appraisal tool.
Mike sold expedite.io for $14,995. Humbleworth appraised it for $692.
We also valued kickers.ai, which Andrew sold for $8,000. Humbleworth pegged it at $394.
As a gut check, we ran a .io domain Andrew bought in a Sav auction for $548 last year. Humbleworth said its marketplace value was $988.
We don’t recommend using Humbleworth for .io and .ai domains
Exact Match descriptive
Now for our exact match, category defining domain.
WaterFilters.com is listed for sale for $3.5 million, although all but one of the appraisal systems we tested appraised it for much less.
Humbleworth thinks its marketplace value is $263,000. This was the second-highest of the systems we tested.
Three and four letter domains
Three and four letter domains are some of the most liquid domains on the market.
We tested a pronounceable CVCV .com domain, dujo.com, that is listed on Afternic for $36,000.
Our goal was to see if the algorithms caught that this was not just a random set of letters. Pronounceable, brandable four letter domains are generally worth more than unpronounceable random letters.
Humbleworth valued it at $27,200.
We also tested a four letter, non-pronounceable. Logan Flatt sold MOTG.com for $14,888. Humbleworth appraised it for $22,360.
Humbleworth correctly valued dujo.com at a higher number than motg.com.
For a three letter domain, we tested VJN.com. It’s listed for sale on Afternic for $39,000. V and J aren’t great letters, so this is likely on the lower end of three letter .com values.
Humbleworth pegs it at $46,400, which isn’t too far off from the asking price.
New TLDs
New top level domains are very hard to value. There is very little sales data about most of them.
Andrew sold voicemail.app for $5,000 last year. It appraised for $1,110.
Mark Levine sold timber.homes for $2,899. Humbleworth appraised it for $3,240.
Again, new TLDs are hard. Your mileage may vary.
Final analysis
Humbleworth suffers from a critical flaw: although it says valuations are based on historical sales data, it doesn’t provide any comps.
Given that it shows three prices (auction, marketplace, and brokerage), it should show comps in each category, or at least for the auction price, since it says it uses historical auction data.
There is also no other backup to the valuations, which is critical for credibility, especially for a system not tied to a major domain company.
On the upside, you can appraise up to 2,000 domains at a time, which might be helpful for a second opinion on your portfolio.
Haha Andrew, after your last article on Graen they went dark and one only sees 404.
Hopefully that won’t be a trend as you review other Appraisal services.