Moniker.com appears to be on Pace to drop another spot to the 9th largest registrar in the next month.
Just a few months ago Moniker.com was the 7th largest registrar.
According to WebHosting.info, over the past 6 weeks Moniker.com has lost about 100,000 registration
| Weeks | Total Domains | Global Market Share |
| 4/11/11 | 2,798,499 | 2.29% |
| 4/4/11 | 2,819,555 | 2.32% |
| 3/28/11 | 2,836,693 | 2.33% |
| 3/21/11 | 2,849,842 | 2.35% |
| 3/14/11 | 2,863,283 | 2.36% |
| 3/7/11 | 2,876,380 | 2.38% |
| 2/28/11 | 2,890,117 | 2.39% |
Consider that the 9th largest registrar, Resellersclub.com is one of the fastest growing registrars gaining some 25K registrations a week.
Resellersclub.com on the week ending April 11, 2011 is only about 80,000 domain behind Moniker.com
So If you combine Moniker 20K or so weekly loss and ResellersClub.com 25K or so weekly gain, it will be just a few weeks until Resellersclub.com overtakes Moniker and becomes the 8th largest registrar dropping Moniker.com to 9th.
Moniker.com still has a 400,000 domain advantage over the 10th largest registrar, Register.com whose performance has been flat.
(Note WebHosting.info only tracks domain registrations in the following extensions: .com. .net. org, .biz, and .info)
In regards to Miniker, the biggest issue I find now and having to have used them heavily the last several months in respect to transfers etc…CUSTOMER SERVICE!
I don’t want to leave a message and get a call back when you feel like it…
I don’t want to have to search for your number…
I dont want to have to join a service just to ask a question or send a support ticket…
I dont want to feel like the reason I enjoyed using moniker is gone now, service!
My recommendation, pick up the bleeping phone!
I wonder how many of the 2.8 million domains are owned by Moniker/Oversee, and if the losses are from it culling its own portfolio.
Andrew
Good point.
How many of the 2.8 million domains that Moniker.com is holding are Oversee domains, and are they dropping them?
Generally speaking I think Moniker which always had a disproportionately high amount of domainer owned portfolios maybe suffering more than most registrars and PPC has decline domainers are dropping a lot of domains
Their customer service is the worst. I left numerous messages and they don’t call back.
Their Last showcase auction was a disaster. Only 2 domains sold.
Agree on oversee domains and as ppc issues. Good points
Also I wonder how much rick had an impact on things? I would say a lot of an impact. Then the chef Patrick issues possible
2002 here we come. Great time to build a .com portfolio and upgrade imo
I never saw what was so great with moniker. Why stay when Monte left and top talent left? There back end sucks and so confusing.
i registered with monicker a few months ago and have not bothered going back. there very restrictive in what you can and cant do with your domains there support stinks they just rope you in and hold your domains hostage they wont last to much longer there are plenty more willing and helpfull registras out there than this outfit
So far so good with Moniker! Know several people by name: Carla, Bari, Glenda, Kori, Jonathan, David if you phone early in the day Florida time, usually you get to speak to someone . . . Jeff Kupietzky himself has personally answered my emails directed to him, always a gentleman!
When I have a question, I email support@oversee.net, get the automated replay, then a human reply within a couple business days. I don’t mess with the ticket system, since their redesign.
It’s no small thing to be able to trust your domains are safe! Once I even got a call from Jonathan saying the email on my Whosis wasn’t working – that was great! My host had to solve that. It’s meaningful to receive a call from your Registrar to say your email isn’t working – don’t say it isn’t!
Monte was the main reason to do business there, but they still have decent customer service.
Moniker.com –they are run by Monkeys
worst worst worst..
The problem with basing anything on webhosting.info figures is that webhosting.info’s figures are over 2.5 million domains in error on .com alone.
The only reliable statistics on domain registrars in the gTLDs come from ICANN. The ICANN figures are contractually delayed by three months or so:
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/monthly-reports/
Some of the dropping domains might be due to PPC domains reaching their end-of-life due to linkrot (when the number of backlinks to a reregistered domains declines to such an extent that the traffic and revenue on a domain becomes non-viable). As the domain business operates on a yearly basis, what is being seen now in many drops is the effect of 2008-2010 registration patterns and the death of easy credit in 2008.
The trickle-down nature of drops in PPC domains is like a pyramid with the industrial level PPC operators at the top. They would have been registering many of the dropped domains for their type-in and traffic. Then when the revenue from these domains does not justify their renewal, they drop them. Then a second layer of the drop pyramid kicks in. These are largely domainers with small portfolios of domains. Their costs are lower as they might often be one-person operations and they may be able to develop some of these domains into minisites. But then those domains that don’t even make money for them are dropped. Some of these domains are reregistered for development or by even smaller scale domainers who try to flip them to other small scale domainers. The whole process from PPC to flipper can take up to three years or registration cycles.
There is a long period repeating spike in new domains/dropped domains around this time every year that might be an echo of the peak of Domain Tasting in 2007. It is visible on the monthly .com TLD graph on
http://www.hosterstats.com/com-domain-name-registrations.php
On this basis, I don’t think that Rick or the Chef Patrick debacle had any major effect on the numbers and this could be a seasonal effect that is more related to non-performing domains being culled from portfolios.
Domain Tasting provided easy revenue for many of the PPC operators and without it, some PPC companies are finding the competition more intense. The demise of large scale Domain Tasting coupled with the fact that many registrars will shift expiring domains to their own auction partners changed the landscape for the PPC operators who were relying heavily on Domain Tasting. The rise of the ccTLDs has also had an impact and with more countries going ccTLD positive (more local ccTLD domains registered locally in that country than .com/gTLDs) there is a shift away from .com in some countries. Ironically some of the rise in ccTLDs can be attributed to largescale PPC parking in .com TLD.
MonteKer – build a business out of nothing – take decent care of your employees – find the right buyer and sell it at the right time – move on – no one is better at the fundamentals of business than Monte
“they Lose 100,000 Registrations Over The Last 6 Weeks”
That was just me moving a 1/10 of my domains out, when I move the rest out they’ll be down another notch 😉
…then I woke up 🙂
Moniker has been having a spate of bad luck (or is it karma?) lately. It’s like beating a dead horse, but you think by now they would “get it” about customer service. They must read the blogs and see what is going on or are they just being obstinate?
Customer service = customer retention, it’s a basic principle of doing business. The one and only time I called, some guy answered in a gruff voice and did not even identify himself or greet me as a Moniker employee, in fact I thought I had the wrong number. Maybe it’s old school of me, but when I call a place of business I am used to someone greeting me or identifying themselves by the business name.
Whatever, let them dig their own grave.
Moniker are suffering badly because they just simply did not learn from the Halverez ‘debacle’ and seem to have carried on as before with the Chef Patrick lunacy. One has to wonder ‘WHO’ is actually making these damn silly decisions to treat domainers openly and blatantly like idiots?
One would have thought that with a name like Oversee the one thing that would/should have existed was an overseer of Customer Service.
I wonder if part of that 100k was Monte taking his
names with him… ??
I have a busy week ahead… I haven’t been able
to bet to the threads much lately been working
on DG and frequent updates of Drops and Discoveries…
What’s Monte going to work on now ??
~Patriia Kaehler – Dayton, Ohio USA – DomainBELL
Moniker has the worst support, even worse than Enom — but just barely. We have a domain we bought through Snapnames and it’s held at Moniker under an account that they created. Unfortunately, their password reset system is terrible along with their support. Every time we get a domain and Moniker is involved it’s a pain.
We the customer shouldn’t have to call and always leave a voicemail, at least pickup the phone once in a while. Someone in earlier comments mentioned all you have to do is send an email to their support and wait 2 days. Excuse me, but that is terrible support. I can call Go Daddy and in less than 5 minutes be connected to their support people. Their eamil support usually responds within hours, not days. That is real customer service.
We are customers of these companies and they have no excuse for forcing terrible customer service, let alone terrible support on us. If we don’t demand better, they will constantly get worse. Don’t accept mediocre support! Demand better.
Hi BullS,
Regarding your “Moniker.com –they are run by Monkeys” comment…
Please don’t disparage monkeys, they can actually do a better job at support than what I’ve seen from Moniker over the years.
I agree 100% with John McCormac’s post, that btw is one of the best blog comments I’ve seen lately.
I have thousands of domains with Moniker and zero complaints. When I submit a ticket it’s quickly replied, Glenda has helped me in the past, and my rep, Don, is always helpful as well.
I have lots of domains with Fabulous, Godaddy, WWD (I’m a reseller) and a few with Dynadot, Dotster, Name.com, etc, but the company I’m using more right now is still Moniker.
Don’t like to have all my eggs on the same basket though…
One of the most maddening things about Moniker’s support is the new ticket system which requires you open a support account, with seperate login and password.
That is ridiculous since they should simply have a link to support on the main page as they did before last years website upgrade.
In addition, they make it very difficult to locate their support phone number compared to GD who puts their 24×7 number at the top of the main page.
Sounds like a few sour grapes. I have Bari as a rep, and just email her when I have an issue, and she will even reply from her smart phone. No bad service there.
“What’s Monte going to work on now ?? ”
@Patricia
rightofthedot.com/about/
@john mccormack – why are the registrar stats delayed 3 mos? what’s the rationale behind the contractual provision you alluded to?
Agree Mr Deleted, Bari is excellent but they should not need to rely on her to such an extent.
I’m transferring domains INTO Moniker, and also buying OOTB domains there. Great backend, great team, and still the best online Showcase auction system in the world. I probably will have about 2000 domains there by the end of the year.
Monte has gone on to pursue his other professional goals in the domain industry, and it will be exciting to see his next project launch. However, his departure hasn’t diminished Moniker’s ability to be one of the three top domainer registrars.
@why I’m not sure. It might be due to the figures being supplied by the registries themselves and the registrars might have considered that time sensitive information.
There’s a monikerdns.net set of nameservers that had a large number of inbound transfers (its total of gTLDs and detected ccTLDs as of 01 April 2011 was 53069). The creation date on the whois record for this domain was 2011-03-02 11:46:20.0. If webhosting.info hadn’t included these nameservers in its Moniker calculations, then its “count” for Moniker might be on the low side.