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Domain summit 2024

My Review of Godaddy's DomainBuy Service

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Rockefeller

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I've now completed several transactions using Godaddy's DomainBuy service and here is my (somewhat) official review. All in all, the service could use work. It's not really for domain name resellers like myself as most of the transactions take at least a week to complete. My main complaint with Sedo used to be how slow the processing time was, I've recently done a few transactions with Sedo who seem to have sped up their process a bit with most transactions being completed within 1-2 business days. My first experience with DomainBuy was as a buyer. I was attempting to contact a domain owner for a month to no avail so I finally signed up for their service (since the domain was held at GD) and again, received no response and basically forgot about the offer, which was $2,500. I received an email after 40 days saying they just made contact with the owner and he submitted a counter offer of $3,500, which I accepted. I paid right away and the transaction was then drug out for about a week while the buyer decided if he "really wanted to sell it or not." Once he made his decision the domain was pushed to me and the transaction was complete.

Within the last 2 weeks I've received 2 offers on my domains through them. The first one was a domain name I picked up for $80 through Godaddy's expiring domain auction platform. The initial offer was $500, which I countered at $3,000 and we finally agreed to $2,750. 5 days went by with no word until my "rep" emailed me and said the buyer was ready to pay (adding that the emails from DomainBuy to the buyer were going into his spam folder), which he did, and now we wait for 3 days until the rep comes back into work and processes the transaction. I could/would directly push the domain name to the buyer but the domain is no longer in my account. The rep took the domain out of my account last time he left work with a "Buyer unreachable" message in the whois. This is DomainBuy's major downfall. All emails are sent to the generic domainbuy email address and only your rep processes your transaction...also, they are not that responsive, even when dealing with payments, etc. I normally do not hear from my rep until 4-5 PM on any given business day. The other offer I received was for a domain name held at Dynadot that I've owned for about a year, it was a plural domain of which I also owned the singular term. The initial offer was $1,000, which I countered at $4,000 and we agreed at $3,000. The buyer paid through escrow.com and he and I simply completed the transaction on our own as our rep (different rep than previous transaction) was MIA for 3-4 days. I also pitched the singular version to the buyer at the same price, which he also purchased.

All in all, the service is just okay...it's nice that Godaddy is the "wal-mart" of domain name registrars and they offer this service. When an end user wants to reg a name...they go to Godaddy. If they type in yourdomainname.com into Godaddy, Godaddy will pitch their $70 DomainBuy service to them. I've also received some low ball offers through them. Why would you pay $70 for a service only to offer me $50? It's pretty silly. They should have a minimum offer...but they still get their $70 payment either way so why would they create a minimum offer? Godaddy already routes all emails to their domainbuy@godaddy.com email address so why not have all brokers work on the open transactions while the broker that sealed the deal takes the commission? It just seems silly that now the buyer and I are idle for 3 days while we wait for our rep to decide to respond.
 
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Domain summit 2024

hugegrowth

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Godaddy seems to have a lot of aftermarket services, Domain Buy, Auctions, and also the Premium Listings. Haven't had any action through them myself, but I have bought a few names at their auctions.
 

mkellerman

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Thanks for the review.
I just sold a domain via the Domainbuy service and am having trouble getting paid. I sold the domain for $2970 and during the negotiation phase, I did send godaddy my account details so they could pay be by SWIFT transfer. After the sale closed, Godaddy tried to send me the money via Paypal (using an email address of mine that is not associated with any Paypal account). They refuse to do a SWIFT transfer, saying their policy is payment via US domestic wire or Paypal only. If I had known that before I sold the domain, I might have refused to sell it and wait for the seller to contact me via another means.

All in all, Godaddy are not friendly to the domain seller.
 

RTM.net

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Thanks for sharing this - I had somehow missed Justin's original indepth (and much appreciated) review.

My fave part of the review... GD being the 'Wal-Mart' of registrars, LOL....

:) Rob
(have only sold domains listed on GD, but not directly through their site, only by buyers contacting me via the WHOIS contact info.)
 
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