Over the last few years we have published a series The good, the bad and the ugly. Readers have been able to leave their feedback and some companies have reached out over the years and let me know they took the posts to heart.
This year I want to try to change it up a bit and, What they do right and what they do wrong. Focusing in a little deeper to give better feedback to industry participants.
When posting what they do wrong, please give your suggestions on how they could improve upon what they are doing wrong.
Do not take ad hominem or personal cheap shots. Speak about the company and give some background on how long you have been a customer.
Do not use the post as an opportunity to promote your company or a competitor.
Today we focus on Dynadot, What do they do right and what do they do wrong?
I find two registrars to be the top: Dynadot.com and Epik.com
Both always looking after domain registrants.
They have all around low prices and a chat that works. ty.
Auction is the most fair I’ve seen and actually works. (Unlike GD).
The UI feels like an engineer made.
I’ve had an account there for a few years and started moving all my GoDaddy names there. It’s nice you don’t have to pay for discount, they just give it to you when you have enough names. Funny thing one of the reasons why I left is because GoDaddy auctions kept getting renewed. Now that they changed their policy and I started bidding at dynadot they have the same problem as GoDaddy did. Users continuing to renew auctioned names..trying to get away from the greedy clawbacks. Dynadot is just as good as GoDaddy if not better when it comes to interface, customer service, and security. Not nearly as much lag or 404 errors, they just don’t have the expired inventory that GoDaddy has.
Right: API, a great way to drop-catch domains in hundreds of tlds without paying high fees. Very good prices overall. I also like the predetermined pricing tiers based on expenditure. Easy to use UI, gets the job done quick.
Wrong: Their expired auctions. There are many things wrong in there(my experience is with ngtld expired auctions so some of the below issues might not be present on .com expired auctions).
1. Owners can still renew the name days after the auction ends which leads to many of them deliberately letting them expire just to get an appraisal.
2. Shill bidding. I’ve won auctions a misappropriate amount of times because the winning bidder didn’t pay. From what I know, these bidders do not get banned from Dynadot but only from participating in auctions but I’m not sure if that’s always the case if the winner is a “long-time customer” and “forgets to pay for whatever reason”.
What’s more interesting is that the price you have to pay if you want the domain is the highest bid you made. The price doesn’t roll back to the highest bid made without counting illegitimate bids. I was told a few months ago this process might change so that Dynadot won’t benefit from the shill bidding but yesterday I won a domain that way and the process is still the same. I hope they make this change soon.
The solutions to both of these issues are easy and apparent.
1. One day before an auction ends the owner can no longer renew.
2. More harsh penalties for non-payers like a permanent ban from Dynadot and some requirements for entering auctions(like minimum age of account or a certain amount of $ deposited as account balance). Price rollback is also a must in cases of a non-payers. It would increase overall trust in the system and ultimately raise the bids honest participants are willing to place.
I would love to get a response on what % of auctions that close at over $50 ultimately get cancelled due to renewal by owner or non-paying winner.
Dynadot are the best for me. User interface, features, pricing and security are superb. Only small negative thing is that they like to do daily maintenance of their website during business hours here in Europe.
I’ve been using Dynadot since March 2018. I like their price, interface, support and security.
Cons:
A) Frequent server maintenance
B) Unattractive domain landing page
Chat log should be kept on-site for the future reference.
I only have a handful of domains at Dynadot but have never had any issues with them, it’s actually where RobbiesBlog.com has been registered at since 2011, we have never moved away.
The aftermarket platform, I have only used a few times and seems smooth but would agree with similar comments above the UI could improve but the functionality of the afterMarket platform appears robust.
Hi Rob
Nice blog ,,following you on Twitter now
Cant find your Linkedin page or FB
Dynadot is my favorite. I’ve actually pointed out bugs and they fixed them. The only things I would improve would be:
1. If my cart is full, on mobile, the page refreshes after a while and the cart is empty. I’ve learned to save the page, but it’s annoying. I think it’s a cookie issue.
2. I wish they showed more extensions as registration options.
Otherwise, love the interface, love the service.
Right:
To me they have one of the most intuitive interfaces, especially for relatively new people.
Good pricing on virtually all TLDs, and great pricing sometimes.
I like that they have a Marketplace, both BIN and auctions. Reasonable commissions.
That they are Sedo + Afternic Fast Transfer premium network partner.
I have never had a problem with any order.
Landers are decent (not outstanding but fine).
I like that they have a presence on NamePros.
Wrong:
Hmmm…. I am having trouble here thinking of anything
Maybe just me, do they have bulk tools? (never looked into it there)
Hi Bob,
yes they do, plus they have an efficient system of foders with presets.
e.g. you can create the following folders
– “parking_provider_1”, set NS to provider 1
– “parking_provider_1”, set NS to provider 2
– “forward to my own brandable website”
and when you move domains in bulk from folder to folder their settings change automatically. Great to test things on your whole portfolio…
I like Dynadot,
Dynadot provide low price .com deals
I maintaince 20% domains with Dynadot
Dynadot has a great interface and love use it
But unfortunately, they don’t listen to what the customers says.
They are still allowing to renew the domains once the expired auction closed and someone is testing real time appraisal value. They have many cancelled that I won there like WaterLeakage.com, vgnl.com, crypto.house..
They also keep 60 days transfer lock if you initiate a transfer from other registrar.
11 words into the first response, bam, list the primary competitor. Did the first poster not read the requirements of this thread? Without even looking, I could have told you that registrar would have been mentioned first thing. Honest to God, it is not always about them.
Dynadot is my favorite registrar. They are responsive, good pricing, the site is structured well, it is intuitive so I can get what I need done quickly. One metric that I use is an ‘irritation factor’, and there’s is very low. They are there when I need them, and they are not spamming namepros when I don’t.
As far as expiring auction domains getting renewed, I was never a fan of registrars seeing this as a cash cow and trying to auction a domain off like that, but that is a process that they have all adopted, it seems. The way I look at it, if someone bids a domain they don’t own up to a certain price and then the owner renews it, too bad so sad. That is the registrar’s fault for selling something they do not own.
I use Dynadot a lot, and overall am very happy, but none are perfect!
1. Pricing is fair with frequent discounts,
2. Their customer service is a little better than average,
3. Their site is easy to understand and use overall.
4. I find the tracking of interesting auctions simple
5. They work with both Afternic and Sedo for fast transfer
6. Quick push and transfers, for incoming and outgoing
7. Marketplace and auction are fairly easy to use and they allow low prices so if you truly want to liquidate, you can. Some sites minimum prices prohibit true liquidation. I have liquidated or 3x reg fee several domains that were not showing the metrics to renew.
Areas for improvement
1. Their help section is either limited in explanation, assumes readers have tech knowledge or is dated.
2. They have this market place auction lockout after you buy a domain on the marketplace which doesn’t allow you to relist if you buy something underpriced. I think a release of the lockout should come to those with x amount of time or purchases, so if you had a scheme to relist immediately you can.
3. Last I checked, a $500 balance was minimum to transfer to Paypal from market place sells. That is BS in my opinion. If every other company in the world can pay you for a $50 domain sale, they should be able too as well.
4. I do worry about shill bidding on some of their domains
5. For whatever reason, like other sites, the user auction does not do very well compared to the expired auction.
6. filtering by nameserver does not include option for sales landing page
7. If you sell a lot on their marketplace finding a way to download those sales is a mystery, I tried their customer service, but they did not know either. Adding marketplace or auction sales prices to download the information on their “inactive domains” section would appear to work.
If I rated the 6 registrars I use Dynadot would be either first or a close second to Epik (also like porkbun, but last I checked they were not associated with any fast transfer options). I also use GD but they are like Walmart, you don’t want to use them, but then again…
Too difficult to get you domains out. As you have to get each auth code individually one by one with several clicks for each one. No option to get though the api (ideally) or even though their csv download option like other registrars. They don’t want you to leave. And easy access to auth codes is a necessity for this business, I choose registrars like Godaddy that gives me that via api so I can even automate giving buyers their codes once payment is secured.
So Dynadot….more like DynaNOT!
For security reasons, that is actually one of the things I love about Dynadot. Even if a scammer manages to log into my account (which is very unlikely), it will take them ages to retrieve each auth. code individually instead of bulk exporting them.
However, it is in fact possible to get your auth. code in bulk from Dynadot if you send them a request from your account email address:
https://www.dynadot.com/community/help/question/bulk-EPP-codes