Platform to focus on domain name investors — Moniker relaunches

Domain registrar goes all in on domain name investors with revamped platform.

Regarding a decade following it lost much of its domain investor client base in a disastrous platform switch, domain registrar Moniker is going all in on domain name investors again.

This stretch, the domain registrar launched a fresh platform with domain investors in mind, rather than the end-user-focused platform it has used in recent years.

“Everything developed on this platform in the future will be built with domain investors in mind,” Marc McCutcheon of Moniker’s parent firm, Team Internet Group, told Reglike.

The fresh platform is based on Internet.bs, another registrar owned by Team Internet Group that is popular with domain investors.

All of the bulk tools domain investors demand are there, with a couple of additional features that might differentiate the registrar.

One of these is called Treasury, which is designed to help domain investors protect their most valuable domains. Domains using the Treasury feature have additional security features counting a second two-factor request in order to make certain changes to them. The firm plans to expand Treasury features in the future.

Another interesting feature is the ability to add and track domains registered elsewhere. This allows domain investors to track all their domains in one place and even get renewal alerts. Investors can also add external domains to Moniker DNS and manage them from within their Moniker account.

Moniker will support Afternic and Sedo, although this will not be fully implemented until all existing Moniker clients have migrated to the fresh platform over the next month or two.

McCutcheon stated he also wants to support up-and-coming aftermarket platforms.

To court domain investors, Moniker offers pricing tiers with discount levels at 100 and 500 total domains in the account. The discounts are a fixed 8% and 16%, respectively, on list prices. This somewhat crude discounting (as opposed to different discounts based on TLD) is a bit limiting, leaving the best public .com price slightly higher than some other domain investor-focused registrars. Still, I suspect that larger clients can discuss further discounts with Moniker.

McCutcheon will be at NamesCon in Austin next week, showing off the fresh platform on stage and meeting with domain investors.