Atom / Atom.com - Marketplace (formerly Squadhelp)

[JudgeMind]

Hey Folks,

I've just started using squadhelp.com to list some of my brandable. So far I have 76 domains listed, there is no fee to list. I've had some decent action so far in the way of interested buyers but no sales as of yet. I've only been with them for 1 week now.

A bit of a summary review of SquadHelp:

PROS

• No Listing fee
• No Logo design fee
• Ability to submit your names to end users holding naming contests
• Ability to chat directly or send a message directly to end users.
• Stats of your marketplace domains are shown in the marketplace dashboard.
• Their customer service and support has been great, 24hr a day chat.
• Ability to increase or decrease the list price of your domains or to show a discount. You can decrease or increase the price yourself by $200. If you want to lower more, you can contact support.
• End users can shortlist your domains before they make a decision on which they want to purchase. The number of shortlists is shown in you marketplace dashboard.
• When you submit your names you get to set the price you wish to get. Because their commissions are high I recommend listing at a higher price to offset the commission costs.
• Their landing pages are fairly basic but they work. Because the marketplace is fairly new, I'm sure we will see style improvements in the future.
• One thing I really like is they accept multiple extensions. I have listed .co and .io along with .com
• Each seller gets a direct link to their marketplace portfolio, HERES MY PORTFOLIO. It is handy if your trying to p[promote your portfolio through social media.
• I like that their marketplace doesn't have tens of thousands domain listings like BB. They are fairly strict on the domains they accept to list and so this helps keep the number of domains in the marketplace down and gets your listings more exposure.

CONS

• Their commissions are very high, depending on the domain name they are usually between 30% and 35%. However, there are no listing fees, no logo design fees, so in the end their commission is very similar to brand buckets.
• Their logos are not top quality, in fact I requested to have some of my logos remade.
• I think they have a big backlog of logos to design, the wait time for logo design has been around 1 week, but your names are still listed while the logos are being designed.
• After your names are accepted you need to agree to their commission rate, at this point you also need to apply your own keywords, descriptions etc. I found this was very time consuming.

 

[Velocity.Now]

I don't like marketplaces hinting at what you should be purchasing / submitting to their marketplaces, how many people are going to go register 2 word .Ai now.

It is a conflict of interest .

 

[Embrand]

@Atom.com Even if I choose to show only my own names on my WLM, on the search page it says "Search +300K Premium Domains". Maybe this wording could be changed to simply "Search for premium domains" like on the homepage of the WLM?

 

[love4ever]

.

 

[Future Sensors]

For TLD zones that share this data, it accumulates to the following NS delegations.

ns1.atom.com / ns2.atom.com: 518,489 domains
ns2.squadhelp.com / ns2.squadhelp.com: 188,319 domains

Total: 706,808 domains have NS delegated to Atom.com (minimum)

Three months later.

ns1.atom.com / ns2.atom.com: 556,404 domains
ns1.squadhelp.com / ns2.squadhelp.com: 176,321 domains

Total: 732,725 domains have NS delegated to Atom.com (minimum)

Difference: 25,917 domains added (~8,600 per month)

 

[NameGroove]

Yikes

 

[Optimal Names]

Yikes

Show attachment 287407

Yep. Was trying to get my daily downloads and its been spinning away for few minutes already.

 

[DomainRecap]

It seems to be back, but everything has been very slow lately (landers and UI), like their infrastructure is being overloaded again.

 

[MarkedMarket]

I just noticed that a domain that I don't own anymore and is delisted on Atom for a long time (5 years), is responsible for most views in my detailed dashboard (>5000 in the past 90 days). The domain redirects to an actual developed website, so clearly something is very wrong with Atom's statistics.

Also 2 negotiated offers that I accepted have not been paid yet by the buyer (one more than 2 weeks ago and the other a week ago) and based on the above (and the fact that credit card payments are limited to $5k), I have decided to move away my domains from Atom. Things are seemingly declining, they are not properly following up with buyers and bugs are not quickly fixed.

 

[Velocity.Now]

How is everyone doing on Atom? For me it is getting quieter and quieter. Of coarse this can change with a few sales but compared to other marketplaces over the last year it is a distant 3rd.

 

[Name2go]

I'm also disillusioned. @Velo.me @MarkedMarket

Fewer sales, my Atom STR is now hovering around 1%, and the trend is still downward.
The few offers that do come in turn out to be not serious. (I recently even ruined one serious offer myself through greed and excessive messaging—that happens too.)
The negotiations by the Atom team are opaque, similar to Afternic Leads. Communication is difficult because an intermediary, human or AI, always answers first, says informing the sales team. You only hear from the sales team if you ask respectively have no onsite information about their activities.
Atom is demanding. I can't keep up with the lander setup. You pay real money upfront for premium listings and logos. You pay the highest sales fee in the industry for premium sales under $5,000. At some point, you start questioning the point.
BUT for me, Atom is still the bright spot in the industry. I like the concept.

The competition?
Parallel listing on Sedo is essential for me to complement the complexity of Atom with Sedo's simplicity and reliability.
Afternic seems to be caught in a downward spiral.
I haven't tested Dynadot and Spaceship marketplaces yet.
Although, yesterday I made my first sale on Spaceship after email negotiations with the buyer. Listing and processing were smooth, simple, and fast—I liked it. 5% fee is an argument.
Namepros Landers will be tested next.

I fear, and no marketplace is to blame for this, that AI is gradually turning us off. The next generation of web users checks content with social media apps and AI-powered research. Do people under 30 still frequently visit other websites?

 

[Optimal Names]

Started in May-June 2025 with 136 premium and 216 standard (was plus but now plain old standard) domains. 352 domains.

Sold 1 domain (premium) within 17 weeks. Very stiff 30% sales fee. So, the STR started at 2.2% and has been dropping since the sale.

Interestingly enough, the domain which sold had very little traffic, but the majority of my other domains get TONS of traffic. Especially my one-word .IO domains, with an offer on one of those which went no where after I accepted it. Yet, the traffic data itself makes little sense to me. For example, yesterday I can see 1,511 "Platform Views" to these domains yet only 57 "Direct Lander Views".

So in my mind I envision it like a pinball machine. The traffic is the ball and its bouncing all over the place registering "Platform Discovery Views" at 26x more views per "Direct Lander Visit" after the traffic gets "inside" the site? I cant make heads or tails of that so I stopped looking over a month ago. However, for this post I just checked and its still very confusing (to me). In the past week my stats say: 132 Direct Lander Visits and 8,768 Platform Discovery Views which again raises an eyebrow ...

I manually place discounts on 99% of my domains every Monday.

I have opened an appeal Oct 6th for one of my premium names regarding the price due to recent comps for that keyword and tld but have not heard a word back from atom. so I have it as make-offer right now but I may ask for it to be removed because I no longer agree with the suggested upper price due to these comps.

I no longer pour over the data like I did when I first listed the names. I download the premium and standard every day and take put that data into a database primarily to make sure nothing has changed. I do look at the visit stats, however, but dont really pay too much attention to it anymore as it doesnt seem to correlate to anything IMO.

I agree with @Name2go about AI probably eating our names, or at least it is beginning to.

I think I am moving some names back to Namepros Lander. I started there and thought I did receive a lot of inquiries, none lead to sales. Maybe its time to go back. I may wait until after the new year. I have listed all of these domains on Afternic and Sedo as well. Syndication for the premiums but manually for the remainder. So there is exposure. If I find time I may list on Dynadot and other marketplaces for the non-premiums.

Sales has been very slow, I have not aquired much in the way of new names, whatever does sell is registered close to or over 20 years ago.

 

[MarkedMarket]

Interestingly enough, the domain which sold had very little traffic, but the majority of my other domains get TONS of traffic. Especially my one-word .IO domains, with an offer on one of those which went no where after I accepted it. Yet, the traffic data itself makes little sense to me. For example, yesterday I can see 1,511 "Platform Views" to these domains yet only 57 "Direct Lander Views".

So in my mind I envision it like a pinball machine. The traffic is the ball and its bouncing all over the place registering "Platform Discovery Views" at 26x more views per "Direct Lander Visit" after the traffic gets "inside" the site? I cant make heads or tails of that so I stopped looking over a month ago. However, for this post I just checked and its still very confusing (to me). In the past week my stats say: 132 Direct Lander Visits and 8,768 Platform Discovery Views which again raises an eyebrow ...

Thank you for your detailed post. For what it's worth: a couple of days ago I changed the nameservers of around 2000 domains away from Atom (around 60% of my portfolio) and it didn't really change a lot in the dashboard. The discovery/lander views went down by 10-20%.

Not sure if Atom is trying to get additional investment or sell their business (I saw that Sedo is for sale now which has some sort of affiliation with Atom) and they are trying to show investors that they have a lot of visitors. I had around 100 lander visits combined per day with 3500 domains. That is just not possible.

I am also not willing to provide valuable domain traffic to Atom when I do not get anything in return for it and am actually only providing my domain names with more competition.

 

[Future Sensors]

"We wanted to share a quick update about our distribution partnerships.

Over the past several months, we’ve been aggressively expanding direct integrations with registrars and other partners to provide more exposure for your domains.

Following this expansion, Sedo has decided to end its partnership with Atom. While we’ve valued the collaboration over the years, this change does not meaningfully impact your exposure. Your domains remain fully discoverable through Atom’s growing network of direct registrar and marketplace integrations. In fact, we will now be accelerating these direct partnerships to provide even greater visibility for your domains.

A quick reminder about listing types:

• Premium listings on Atom are exclusive to our platform and therefore cannot be added to Sedo. You may still list them on Afternic and certain other qualifying ICANN-accredited registrars. View Terms
• Plus and Standard listings remain fully non-exclusive — you can continue listing those names on any other marketplace.

Our mission remains the same: to make buying and selling domains faster, more transparent, and more creator-friendly. Building a direct, open distribution network is a key part of that vision.

We are in the process of finalizing several additional partnerships and will be making announcements in the near future.

Thank you for being part of the Atom community and for continuing to support our work as we build the most open and efficient ecosystem for domain sellers and buyers."

 

[Chris Co]

Following this expansion, Sedo has decided to end its partnership with Atom.

Strange direction for Sedo to take considering it's only just listed itself for sale?

Can you think of any good reasoning behind it?

 

[NameGroove]

"We wanted to share a quick update about our distribution partnerships.

Over the past several months, we’ve been aggressively expanding direct integrations with registrars and other partners to provide more exposure for your domains.

Following this expansion, Sedo has decided to end its partnership with Atom. While we’ve valued the collaboration over the years, this change does not meaningfully impact your exposure. Your domains remain fully discoverable through Atom’s growing network of direct registrar and marketplace integrations. In fact, we will now be accelerating these direct partnerships to provide even greater visibility for your domains.

A quick reminder about listing types:

• Premium listings on Atom are exclusive to our platform and therefore cannot be added to Sedo. You may still list them on Afternic and certain other qualifying ICANN-accredited registrars. View Terms
• Plus and Standard listings remain fully non-exclusive — you can continue listing those names on any other marketplace.

Our mission remains the same: to make buying and selling domains faster, more transparent, and more creator-friendly. Building a direct, open distribution network is a key part of that vision.

We are in the process of finalizing several additional partnerships and will be making announcements in the near future.

Thank you for being part of the Atom community and for continuing to support our work as we build the most open and efficient ecosystem for domain sellers and buyers"

Interesting. Seller options are now:

BrandBucket + Sedo
Atom + Afternic (and other registrars).

While Afternic is clearly larger than Sedo, not allowing sellers to self-list on Sedo (+ 10%) does make the calc a little different.

 

[draco]

Following this expansion, Sedo has decided to end its partnership with Atom. While we’ve valued the collaboration over the years, this change does not meaningfully impact your exposure. Your domains remain fully discoverable through Atom’s growing network of direct registrar and marketplace integrations. In fact, we will now be accelerating these direct partnerships to provide even greater visibility for your domains.

I asked Google "how large a marketplace is Sedo"

Sedo is the world's largest domain marketplace, with over 24 million listed domains and 3 million customers globally. It serves as a global platform for buying, selling, and parking internet addresses, connecting millions of buyers and sellers in more than 25 languages.

 

[Future Sensors]

[Atom] "this change does not meaningfully impact your exposure."

https://www.atom.com/syndication

 

[King]

No sedo...

Strange direction for Sedo to take considering it's only just listed itself for sale?

Can you think of any good reasoning behind it?

Perhaps Atom tried buying them or Sedo offered it to Atom, no deal, thus terminated collaboration in spite.

 

[Future Sensors]

Strange direction for Sedo to take considering it's only just listed itself for sale?

Can you think of any good reasoning behind it?

I get the sense that Sedo increasingly views Atom as a direct competitor, a shift from the dynamic they had when the partnership first began in 2020. For context, here's the original announcement of the Squadhelp–Sedo partnership, published in March 2020. Whether Sedo's move followed a renegotiation is something I can't say for sure.

Atom claiming parity with Sedo's 650‑partner SedoMLS network is a stretch, but I can see why they'd choose to position it like that.

 

[Future Sensors]