“The good, the bad and the ugly” An opportunity for readers to discuss what they like and don’t like about a particular company in the domain space.
Each post will deal with just one company, readers are encouraged to share their positive and negative experiences. Suggestions for improvement are also encouraged.
One of the goals of the column is that company representatives will see how their customers think of them. This can lead to a conversation on fixing problems.
What is not allowed:
- Personal attacks on individuals at the chosen company
- Promoting a competitor
- Posting domains for sale
The company in the spotlight today is Enom
Founded: 1997
I like enom because they have caught some domains for me over the years that other registrars could not get. Prices have usually been pretty good too.
My main issue with enom was the “Reports” function which I use to print out registrations & purchases for tax purposes. This reports function is really old compared to other registrars. I’ll bet they haven’t updated it since the late ’90’s. Uniregistry, Epik and Name have better billing summaries.
The good: decent prices. Usability has improved somewhat since the sale to Tucows.
I have a wholesale account under eNom’s BulkRegister brand and am very happy with the whole arrangement. A wholesale account can often be better for domain investors than a reseller account, although wholesale accounts are not something that eNom advertises.
The bad: In theory, eNom’s “folders” feature for bulk editing of domains is a great idea. But they were never able to fully implement their own technology, and “magic” settings for a folder aren’t applied to all the domains in a folder. Registrants’ organization names and contact information seem particularly resistant to synchronization.
The ugly: one of the first things you learn in engineering is how to write and read process flow diagrams or PFDs. Yet eNom has never really had a process flow. You put items in a cart, and then if it’s more than a handful of items, you cannot reach the cart except with a bit of gymnastics. Once you’ve checked out and emptied the cart, you find yourself in a cul-de-sac, several clicks away from being able to manage the domains that you’ve just purchased or renewed.
eNom’s UI for domain management is not particularly intuitive. There aren’t hints or visible switches to alert users that they can arrange lists of domains according to factors such expiration dates, for example. I lost a few domains before I figured this one out.
On wholesale accounts, as opposed to reseller accounts, the UIs and help screens for delegating some control functions to third parties need to be improved. Options need to be built in to enable third parties to set up their own accounts and then to have domains pushed to them from the original registrant’s account. For example, if a registrant registers a domain for a client, but after a few years wants the client to take control of the domain, there needs to be easier ways to make that transition. Here again, PFDs would help.
How much do you pay for .COM with your wholesale accoiunt ?
$9.85 per year for .COMs. This might be a grandfathered price. There is also an annual membership fee of aprox $100. This fee is only available through an auto-renew function, which means no advance payments (for price lock-ins) or postponement in the event of cash-flow problems. Without paying the annual fee, prices skyrocket and new charges appear for otherwise free services, such as 404 redirects.
At that .COM price, I expect (and always receive) good support from BulkRegister. If anything, they seem to want to provide more hand holding than I want or need.
I also have accounts at GoDaddy, UniRegistry and 101Domains, but BulkRegister (eNom) is by far my favorite. Their UIs for nTLD registration searches are a mess (no price sorting and otherwise very tedious) but on numerous nTLDs I’ve found BulkRegister to be the cheapest of any of the registrars I’m using, especially when it comes to year-on-year renewals.
For sales, I’ve found that most buyers have eNom accounts, which makes pushing domains to them quick and easy.