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]

Great idea. Like you say, it's a bit of a trap, and once you have upgraded to premium you are locked in because Atom makes it difficult to remove them (only 10% of your entire inventory being allowed to be delisted).

Maybe Atom could for a brief period of like a month or two, allow all those who want to delist their premiums to do so without penalty.

The terms are also slightly ambiguous because this page says you are free to "delist" your domains without penalty if you let them expire:

https://helpdesk.atom.com/en/articles/5784149-keeping-your-account-in-good-standing

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However, this doesn't seemed to be mentioned anywhere else on Atom's site or documentation, and the customer support that I spoke to didn't even seem to be aware of this policy at all!

So if you let your domains expire, what guarantee do you have that this won't count against you in some counter somewhere hidden from your view, if the staff aren't even aware of the rules?

Imagine wanting to get rid of your bad names, so you let 15% of your atom premium inventory expire, only to receive an email that your account is no longer in good standing. There needs to be more transparency here.

I have move out around 40% over the last 9 months without any penalty.

 

[Embrand]

Does anyone regularly submit .com names at both Atom and BrandBucket? If yes, is there a big difference between what names they accept and how they price them?

I just started giving Atom a try again after only using BrandBucket for a long time, but I guess it wasn't a great timing if names there are struggling to sell now...

 

[NorthernDomains]

once you have upgraded to premium you are locked in because Atom makes it difficult to remove them (only 10% of your entire inventory being allowed to be delisted).

Use the chat feature and let them know you want to de-list all or some (30-day notice) of your Premium domains. Someone from Atom will contact you to confirm.

 

[NameGroove]

@Atom

Atom is down again - probably the worst thing that can happen to a website and it's happening with regularity

 

[NameGroove]

Does anyone regularly submit .com names at both Atom and BrandBucket? If yes, is there a big difference between what names they accept and how they price them?

I just started giving Atom a try again after only using BrandBucket for a long time, but I guess it wasn't a great timing if names there are struggling to sell now...

Big difference (which is a good thing). Brandbucket accepts many of my Atom rejects. BB accepts much longer names and doesn't care as much about many syllables. BB accepts many short made up 6L-7L CVCV type names but denies many keyword+keyword mashups.

As for pricing, it's all over the place. For hand regs, BB tends to price lower but not always.

 

[Velocity.Now]

Big difference (which is a good thing). Brandbucket accepts many of my Atom rejects. BB accepts much longer names and doesn't care as much about many syllables. BB accepts many short made up 6L-7L CVCV type names but denies many keyword+keyword mashups.

As for pricing, it's all over the place. For hand regs, BB tends to price lower but not always.

 

[Embrand]

Big difference (which is a good thing). Brandbucket accepts many of my Atom rejects. BB accepts much longer names and doesn't care as much about many syllables. BB accepts many short made up 6L-7L CVCV type names but denies many keyword+keyword mashups.

As for pricing, it's all over the place. For hand regs, BB tends to price lower but not always.

Interesting. Thanks. Yes, it is also my impression that pricing differs a lot.

 

[Chris Co]

Use the chat feature and let them know you want to de-list all or some (30-day notice) of your Premium domains. Someone from Atom will contact you to confirm.

Yeah, but the trouble is what if the person on the other end doesn't know about this policy:

https://helpdesk.atom.com/en/articles/5784149-keeping-your-account-in-good-standing

The support I spoke to before wasn't aware there was a difference between these two options (they thought expiries still counted towards the 10% limit). So how do you guarantee it won't count towards your quota if you're leaving lots of domains to expire, for example, and still want your account to be in good standing.

What makes the policy even more confusing is that some have been able to delist a high number without issue:

I have move out around 40% over the last 9 months without any penalty.

whereas others have been threatened with their account being placed in bad standing.

 

[monotheist]

Your site is very slow. I am accessing it from South Asia.

 

[internext]

Is NameBright not considered a significant-enough registrar by Atom?

Just sold a name, and Atom wants the auth code because it doesn't have an escrow account at NameBright to push the name into.

The problem is I just acquired the name a month ago and had it pushed to me. And even though it was an internal push, NB is doing its best GoDaddy impersonation and is enforcing a 60-day transfer lock, so it's stuck there for another month.

Now I am wondering how to conserve my sale with these two pigheaded, domainer-unfriendly situations butting heads with each other. Helpdesk solutions so far have not been helpful. **NameBright is sticking to their guns that they cannot help me. And Atom is silent so far. How hard to open an account to push to at NameBright? This is ridiculous!


EDIT: **NameBright made an exception and helped me. Thanks
EDIT2: NB rescinded help and re-lockled the name.
>>>>>>>ATOM had all day to initiate the transfer and did NOTHING!!!

 

[Leo2k]

Is NameBright not considered a significant-enough registrar by Atom?


Now I am wondering how to conserve my sale with these two pigheaded, domainer-unfriendly situations butting heads with each other.

How about asking support to suggest the buyer to create an account with NB and share their acc detail and you push the domain to the buyer?

 

[internext]

Atom wants the auth code because it doesn't have an escrow account at NameBright

@Leo2k, thanks for the idea, but it's a 24-month lease

 

[Simon SE]

But GD & Afternic work. Oh, the irony.

They use AWS infra so their massive outage was last month.

And Atom is silent so far.

Their method of dealing with support requests is to simply ignore and hope it goes away. I lost track of how many times I was told "we will let you know" this month.

 

[Leo2k]

@Leo2k, thanks for the idea, but it's a 24-month lease

Is NameBright not considered a significant-enough registrar by Atom?


Now I am wondering how to conserve my sale with these two pigheaded, domainer-unfriendly situations butting heads with each other.

Oops.

 

[JJAllan]

@Atom

Atom is down again - probably the worst thing that can happen to a website and it's happening with regularity

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Atom back up. (for now)

 

[Velocity.Now]

Yeah, but the trouble is what if the person on the other end doesn't know about this policy:



The support I spoke to before wasn't aware there was a difference between these two options (they thought expiries still counted towards the 10% limit). So how do you guarantee it won't count towards your quota if you're leaving lots of domains to expire, for example, and still want your account to be in good standing.

What makes the policy even more confusing is that some have been able to delist a high number without issue:



whereas others have been threatened with their account being placed in bad standing.

I do remember getting this warning once but have yet to hear anything else despite going multiple times over the 10% limit.

Has anyone had their account placed into bad standing ?

 

[End Game]

They had so much promise. I still have 300 names there, but outlook is getting worse.

 

[Velocity.Now]

They did seem to be doing really well with big .ai sales but they seem to have dried up or sellers have shifted to Spaceship Seller Hub for the 5% commission.

I think sellers were taken in with all the bells, whistles ,high acceptance rates , high valuations, Ai and Stats.

 

[DomainRecap]

They had so much promise. I still have 300 names there, but outlook is getting worse.

Atom is working just fine for me - regular offers and some sales. You just can't fall down the rabbit hole and be worrying about the extra crap.

That said, people with OCD might want to steer clear of Atom.

 

[Simon SE]

I lost a bit of faith with Atom but decided to persevere. It's not really either / or, its better to not cut off any distribution channel.

Some names really fit well with Atom. And since you can now also sell them on Spaceship and Afternic at same time it makes sense. Distribution is everything.