Quantifying the domain aftermarket slowdown

Take a look at GoDaddy’s aftermarket growth rates.

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The domain aftermarket exploded at the onset of the pandemic. Now, it’s coming back to earth.

GoDaddy (NASDAQ: GDDY) is one of the biggest players in the aftermarket. Consider this data regarding its aftermarket business as stated by its recently published annual note:

From 2020 to 2021, its aftermarket revenue grew 69.2%
From 2021 to 2022, its aftermarket revenue grew just 5.8% despite the buyout of Dan.com.

That’s quite the slowdown. Look, growth is still growth. But without Dan.com broken out, it’s difficult to tell how much of it was organic.

GoDaddy’s aftermarket has a few segments. There’s the sale of its own domain names (now 1.2 million as stated by the annual note), sales of third-party domains through its Afternic network, and expired domains.

Tucows, which sells its expired domains through GoDaddy, noted a drop in expired domain revenue in Q4 2022 compared to the prior year.

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