A lot of competition for domain sales platforms — Suddenly, there’s

Fresh entrants promise great features but face a challenging landscape.

Over the past five years, it seems like the number of aftermarket domain name platforms has been shrinking. That’s largely since GoDaddy purchased two of them (Uniregistry and Dan) and subsequently shut them down.

Still, a handful of fresh entrants in recent months seek to replace some of the best features of these shuttered platforms, giving domain investors more choice in where they sell their domains.

On this stretch’s podcast, I interviewed Sam Dennis, founder of DomainEasy.

And just a few months ago, Jeffrey Gabriel of Saw.com was on the show, talking regarding his firm’s fresh sales platform.

While just launched, both platforms have been in the works for a while. Both seem to emulate some of the best features of Uniregistry’s self-brokering platform.

Another entrant is Aftermarket.com, which purchased domain.io. (At the time I’m writing this story, a Cloudflare error prevents people from visiting the site. I will update with a link when it’s working again.)

It’s good to see competition in this space. Competition is what pushes the industry forward.

Yet all of these platforms face an uphill battle thanks to a savvy move GoDaddy made a year ago.

When GoDaddy changed its commissions at the beginning of 2023, it added a stiff penalty for people who don’t point their names to its platforms: commissions are 67% higher. Sellers pay 25% instead of 15%.

While GoDaddy generates lots of sales from its distribution network, these competitors don’t have that sort of reach. Sales are dependent on people typing the domain and visiting the lander. For people who sell through Afternic, the higher cost of sales there might dissuade them from trying fresh platforms.

Atom introduced a bit of a workaround this year, at least for lower-cost names. If a Premium name sells on Afternic rather than Atom, it covers the difference up to $300. Atom also is trying to solve part of the distribution problem through marketing, and some of these fresh competitors hope to do the same.

To take a bite out of the aftermarket like Uniregistry and Dan did, these platforms must convince sellers that they add enough value to overcome the Afternic commission penalty.

For the industry’s sake, I hope they can add enough value for this to happen.