Back in 2016 we started a series here that looked at the best and worst about companies in the domain industry. Over the last 30 months a lot has changed at many companies so we are revisiting the good, the bad and the ugly.
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 Sedo.
Founded: February 12, 2001
The good:
The only marketplace utilizing simple and reliable method of automatic domain verification by TXT record.
Well-known brand.
The bad:
Stupid, lacking https, unintuitive, boring landing pages which you have to use to have 10% sales fee.
Cant price anything above 50K without paying for their appraisal.
Horrible search – shows nonsense domains like (keyword)qwsxud.com above (keyword) in other extensions. Most people agree that .com is more important, but not so much more to give priority to the complete trash domains. And you cant limit keyword longer than 7 characters to avoid seeing these.
Auction model prevents stealth acquisitions.
No crypto.
The ugly:
Not sure. Maybe some of the bad is ugly.
SEDO is so outdated and ancient. Very hard to navigate and they are very slow to respond to support requests. They need to step up their game and make their site look like it was built in 2019. Time for them and afternic to step up their UI and attract new customers by actually marketing their tools, services, and upsells you can buy to promote names.
I stopped using Sedo a couple of years ago and list all my names at Afternic, Afternic was a bit pricey so I listed them at dan.com. I’m really pleased with their interface and payments hit my account quicker than Afternic
They have “Okay” User interface and nice they published the sales report.
SEDO, Uni, and Afternic are the only ones worth sending your domains.
Good assessment Fat Anon. Thanks.
SEDO should skip the 50K maximum sales-price-level. This is simply stupid.
SEDO should innovate in terms of “Domain-Leasing” and “Domain-Renting”.
See the latest video from Domain-Sherpa here:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/barrie-insights/
NonLiquid
Caters to those holding only the most premium of names and that “status quo”, is just alright, for all the fat, fat domainers.
good good
I tried to create an account, but was asked to send them my identify verification documents through postal mail. Unbelievably inefficient and inconvenient. So, no thanks.
Hi Ethan,
could you give us a bit more feedback about your experience?
You can send it directly to us through feedback@sedo.com.
We do not request identity documents via postal mail unless it would be the only option for you to send it to us.
An Email is usually enough.
Thank you in advance,
Your Sedo Team
Yeah. Postal mail seemed to be the only option for me. But even Escrow.com did not have such a restriction for me.
Anyway, I had sent you the details, although I already have my Sedo account deleted.
I would like to correct my first comment that, those identify verification documents were intended for certifying account, not for creating account.
Hi all,
Thank you all for your constructive feedback so far.
If you wish to share additional feedback with us directly do not hesitate to contact us through feedback@sedo.com.
Kind regards,
Your Sedo Team
Good: A good domain brokerage company with good reputation in Europe! They are my first choice for selling domains.
Bad: Not much innovation. Sedo still does not provide any Ad-Free landing page; they stick to the old-fashioned parking/landing pages with ads. Due to this, they are losing terrain to Afternic and to the newcomer Efty.
With Afternic all I needed is to change the name servers to ns3.afternic.com and ns4.afternic.com to land on their ad-free landing page. I hope to see something similar from Sedo in the near future ( like ns3.sedoparking.com and ns4.sedoparking.com for ad-free landing/sale’s page).
We just want to sell domains not interested in parking revenue 🙂
Good:
Data on landing-page traffic is important for marketing, price setting, and deciding which domains to renew. Sedo is unique among the top marketplaces for the data it provides. The first thing that I do with a new domain is to set up a Sedo landing page and then wait a week for the traffic data before deciding what to do next with the domain. Sedo’s provision of data needs to grow in terms of collection-period options, ability to be archived, and the accuracy and specificity of traffic origination data. But for now I’m deeply grateful for what Sedo is doing.
Bad:
Sedo’s bare-bones price structure, with only two possible price-point settings (minimum-bid and BIN prices), capped at $50k, are limiting Sedo’s feasibility for anything except BIN prices at or below $12k, IME.
Ugly:
The explanation that Sedo managers have provided for not updating their platform is that they have been concentrating on expanding the network of registrars who participate in the syndication of premium listings on Sedo. However, with a sub-par pricing structure, as described above, it does not make sense for sellers to always participate in the premium-listing program – except with domains that can be assigned a BIN price ≤$12k.
The integration of Sedo’s premium listing service with Enom has effectively broken Enom’s bulk-management functionality, thereby preventing updates of contact data on Enom, (and for registrants to effectively manage their domains within Enom’s “time-saving” folder system) without first deleting a domain’s premium listing on Sedo. Explanations and FAQs regarding Sedo breaking Enom’s folder system (especially the automated synchronization of folder contents) are largely lacking. This failure to integrate makes it less convenient to work with Sedo and Enom, both separately and together.
So what happens if I sell a domain for a price of EUR 1 million at SEDO’s marketplace ?
Will SEDO still take 15% to 20% commission ? Just because I am listing my domain there ?
There should be different commission-rates, based on the Sales-price.
The current commission-rates are just too high. Decrease your commission and you will make more business.
SEDO is showing the traffic-number named “Offer Views” on the Landing-Page of a certain domain.
The used term “Offer Views” is not correct, since this number is actually showing the amount of “Views” from the first day of a month until the last day of a the month. SEDO is also setting this number back to ZERO at the first day of each and every month.
This is counter-productive, since when a potential domain-buyer is visiting the Landing-Page of my domain at the first day of a given month, the traffic-number will be very low.
SEDO should re-name this traffic-number from currently “Offer Views” towards “Month-to Date Views”.
SEDO should implement a new traffic-number for “Average Monthy Views”.
SEDO should implement a new traffic-number for “Average Yearly Views”.
Showing “Monthly Views” AND “Yearly Views” will give a potential domain-buyer a good picture of the domain-traffic.