Recent changes at Dan.com indicate that the GoDaddy brand is approaching its end of life.
While there is no public time frame shared by GoDaddy about an oncoming retirement of Dan.com, it’s expected to follow the trajectory of Uniregistry, another successful domain platform bought and shut down by GoDaddy.
In recent days a series of announcements indicate that Afternic is becoming the primary focus of GoDaddy engineers and developers, several of which arrived from Uniregistry and perhaps Dan.com.
First off, dot .in domain names are no longer supported on the Dan.com platform, as of the end of July. It’s not clear if that’s due to an issue with the Indian .in registry. The bottom line is, you’ll have to move your .in domains away from Dan.com, although existing contracts such as lease to own will continue until paid off in full.
Dan.com has also removed the option to list any domain in any currency. All domains will now be listed in US dollars but payments can be made in USD, EUR, or GBP. Existing listings in EUR or GBP have already been converted, using that day’s exchange rates.
Confused yet?
It seems that Dan.com wants to unify the cost of all domains externally, perhaps after complaints by US-based customers agreeing to buy domains in marginally more expensive EUR and definitely more expensive GBP. What mattes is that domain sellers using Dan.com will continue to receive payments in their preferred currency, which does not even have to match their locale. Of course, ensure your bank accepts such transactions and doesn’t convert them automatically to USD, otherwise what’s the point?
The last and most important change recently announced at Dan.com involves BIN pricing.
If you list domains with a buy it now price, they will be soon listed at Afternic automatically. Opting out of this will no longer be possible, a clear indication that Afternic, once it exits its perpetual beta phase, will become the main destination for domain portfolios. Of course, don’t be surprised at that point if GoDaddy jacks up the fees back to 20%.
What remains to be seen is whether the eventual shut down of Dan.com—a great domain selling platform when left to its own devices—will occur in 2024 or even earlier.
