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.
