Dan.com moving into the GoDaddy group of companies was the news of the day, yesterday.
The European start-up is a DomainGang sponsor and has been the domain selling platform for domainers by and large, increasing its inventory at a steady rate: 2.2 million domains currently use the Dan.com DNS.
And there lies the secret of success for Dan: Scalability.
Managing millions of domains on a platform and replicating the user experience (UX) consistently, from point A—domain inquiry—to point Z—domain sale, is the quintessential element that attracts domain investors to use the Dan.com services.
Naturally, Dan.com was preparing for the type of collective backlash that’d accompany their transition into being a GoDaddy company. After acquiring Uniregistry in 2020, GoDaddy has dragged its feet rolling out improvements to Afternic, its aged but popular domain selling platform. After two plus years, not much noteworthy has come out of that.
In a message posted by Dan.com representatives on the popular domain forum, NamePros, the company attempted to describe what this acquisition means:
We understand that the first reaction many Dan users have can be a negative one. However, please know that this is not your typical exit.
100% of Dan’s employees including management and Reza won’t leave the company and the reason for that is because we’re given the chance to do what we do well at a larger scale.
We will build out our vision just with more resources at our disposal which we needed to push forward faster.
Give us some time and we will make our roadmap clearer and when that’s in place, we believe the sentiment will turn positive.
Good things are ahead for domain investors!
While lacking specific details on the timeframe and any potential changes to the financial parts of the services (e.g. commission rates,) the statement above provides some light on what this acquisition might look like for Dan.com employees.
Sorry but the statement above by dan.com is a load of bullcrap. Dan.com was making huge money from sales of domains, there is no way they needed more funding to bring the platform forward. Anyone that believes that will probably be in the group that believed Uni Registry would stay up and running.
Yes, I believe the employees were hired on but working for big corp is way different than the at home environment dan had and it’s totally unrealistic to say 100% of dan’s employees will stay.
I smell a new platform similar to the old dan on the horizon and maybe, just maybe, this time domain investors have to be more heavily involved where no single entity can decide to sell out. I’m talking about a community based platform where the profits go back into developing the platform further.
MapleDots – I don’t believe the issue here is funding their own scalability, that’s already proven. They are selling the tech so that Afternic/GoDaddy can reach that level of scalability. The proof is in the Dan sales volume, of course. Perhaps commissions will be raised in the long run, perhaps Dan will continue to run independently for a year or so while it builds Afternic’s new version that’s long overdue.
there are plenty of other options. DAN is not cheapest on the commission.. their UX is the key differentiator.. On commission side DaaZ.com is the best .. their fees are industry low – just 5% for BIn and 7% for other sales… also they process payouts with in 48 hours , mostly with in 24 hours.. its a 4 year old London tech start-up , certainly they have to improve on UX side.. otherwise they are also quite promising player to compete.