Built a comp-backed domain appraisal tool -- looking for honest feedback

[domainvested]

Hey everyone -- I've been lurking here for a while and finally decided to post. I built a domain appraisal tool called DomainVested and I'm looking for people to stress test it before I do anything public with it.

The thing that drove me crazy about existing tools is they just spit out a number with zero explanation. GoDaddy says $1,200, Estibot says $8,000, and you're sitting there going "cool but why?" So I built something that actually shows its work.

The core idea: every valuation is backed by real comparable sales -- right now sitting on about 46K actual transaction records. When you appraise a domain, you see the comps it pulled, the score breakdown (brandability, memorability, pronounceability, market potential), trademark risk flags from USPTO, and a verdict. You can disagree with it but at least you know HOW it got there.

You can try it without signing up -- go to app.domainvested.com and type in a domain right on the homepage. You'll see the score instantly. Sign up (free, no card) to unlock the full report with comps, valuation range, and AI analysis. Free tier gives you 10 appraisals a month. Pro is $29/month for higher volume, bulk scoring, and deeper analysis.

What I'm specifically looking for: domains where the valuation is obviously wrong. I know it's going to miss on some -- that's why I need real domainers testing it, not just me staring at my own code. If you've sold a domain recently and know the actual sale price, I'd love to see how the tool compares.

Appreciate any feedback, even if it's "this sucks because X" -- that's actually more useful than "looks cool."

app.domainvested.com

 

[biggie]

Hi

you gotta go to the back of the line


imo….

 

[domainvested]

Hi

you gotta go to the back of the line


imo….

Fair enough — I know I'm new here. Happy to earn my spot. If you get a chance to try it, I'd genuinely value your take on where it's off. The comp matching on .com brandables is where I'm least confident.

 

[biggie]

Fair enough — I know I'm new here. Happy to earn my spot. If you get a chance to try it, I'd genuinely value your take on where it's off. The comp matching on .com brandables is where I'm least confident.

Hi

from the beginning, you started off on the wrong foot
with so many other “tool” creators and the a eye powered platforms all vying for domainers traffic and $, then you need to offer as much or better for less or for free…until you earn a spot, on the block.

just saying…


imo…

 

[domainvested]

Hi

from the beginning, you started off on the wrong foot
with so many other “tool” creators and the a eye powered platforms all vying for domainers traffic and $, then you need to offer as much or better for less or for free…until you earn a spot, on the block.

just saying…


imo…

Im an actual domainer who built the tool for my own internal use and to help me manage my own domain portfolio and acquisition. I essentially took my scoring/valuation doctrine that has netted me relatively strong sales such as kissy.ai for $15k and boost.tv for $9k, among many others, into an ai-assisted platform. This helps me avoid the crawl among multiple appraisal services, whois lookups, trademark searches, AI feedback/analysis, etc into one tool. Its difficult to post on forums like here and Reddit about new tools because so many of them are either rule gated or dont receive positive feedback from those who dont like change/AI. Theres a lot in the pipeline for the app, but I really just need some sets of eyes on it before I build further. I'll work on my approach going forward, thank you for the feedback.

 

[domainvested]

One thing I should've led with — the tool isn't just an LLM guessing what a domain is worth. That's what most of these "AI appraisal" tools do and honestly it drives me nuts. DomainVested pulls actual sales comps, WHOIS age, trademark status, keyword search volume, TLD aftermarket activity — real data you can verify. The AI layer just synthesizes it, it doesn't make it up. I built it that way specifically because I got tired of tools confidently telling me a random 4-letter .ai was worth $200K with zero receipts behind the number. If there's no data backing the valuation, it's not an appraisal, it's a hallucination.

 

[fka1080405]

The fundamental problem is that you cannot "appraise" a domain name and people trying to value domain names do not want an "appraisal". A person with a domain name wants to know how much can I sell this domain for? but domain name appraisals do not answer that question.

A domain name doesn't have any comparables, every domain name is unique. You can find structurally or semantically similar domains but that doesn't speak to their similarity in value. Domain names are only valuable to a buyer. Most domain names will never have a buyer.

Consider how many domains have been registered over all time, well over a billion, there are something like half a billion active right now. How many of those could ever sell for any amount of money, even just a single dollar? If you go to Namebio and look at sales, you'll see there has been ~2 million domain name sales recorded by Namebio. Yet, most of those are expired domain name auctions. If we remove expired domain name auctions from the dataset, the total number of domains that have ever sold is closer to 100,000 than 1,000,000.

So, out of more than 1 billion domain names, we could be very generous and say 250,000 have sold. That's 1,000,000,000 / 250,000 = 0.025% of domain names. A tool that reported $0 value for every single domain would be accurate for 99.975% of domains. The most accurate appraisal tool in the world would report a $0 value for every single domain.

So, does your tool report a value of more than $0 on more than 99.975% of domains? If so, it is less accurate than a static page that says $0 for every single domain.

Since the rise of vibe coding, these type of platforms have been appearing one after the other, there are dozens. And that's totally fine, there's no problem in building a thing that already exists, but unless you have a deep understanding of the market and/or some novel approach to thinking about value, you're not adding anything new.

So, step back, instead of positioning your tool as being based on real sales data (which is true of almost all appraisal tools): what question are you trying to answer for your users? As someone with a lot of domains, what value would I get from your tool?

 

[domainvested]

The fundamental problem is that you cannot "appraise" a domain name and people trying to value domain names do not want an "appraisal". A person with a domain name wants to know how much can I sell this domain for? but domain name appraisals do not answer that question.

A domain name doesn't have any comparables, every domain name is unique. You can find structurally or semantically similar domains but that doesn't speak to their similarity in value. Domain names are only valuable to a buyer. Most domain names will never have a buyer.

Consider how many domains have been registered over all time, well over a billion, there are something like half a billion active right now. How many of those could ever sell for any amount of money, even just a single dollar? If you go to Namebio and look at sales, you'll see there has been ~2 million domain name sales recorded by Namebio. Yet, most of those are expired domain name auctions. If we remove expired domain name auctions from the dataset, the total number of domains that have ever sold is closer to 100,000 than 1,000,000.

So, out of more than 1 billion domain names, we could be very generous and say 250,000 have sold. That's 1,000,000,000 / 250,000 = 0.025% of domain names. A tool that reported $0 value for every single domain would be accurate for 99.975% of domains. The most accurate appraisal tool in the world would report a $0 value for every single domain.

So, does your tool report a value of more than $0 on more than 99.975% of domains? If so, it is less accurate than a static page that says $0 for every single domain.

Since the rise of vibe coding, these type of platforms have been appearing one after the other, there are dozens. And that's totally fine, there's no problem in building a thing that already exists, but unless you have a deep understanding of the market and/or some novel approach to thinking about value, you're not adding anything new.

So, step back, instead of positioning your tool as being based on real sales data (which is true of almost all appraisal tools): what question are you trying to answer for your users? As someone with a lot of domains, what value would I get from your tool?

You're raising the right question and honestly I agree with most of what you said. The word "appraisal" is doing a lot of heavy lifting and yeah, most tools that use it are basically guessing. And you're right that the vast majority of domains will never sell.

The question I'm actually trying to answer isn't "what is this domain worth" in the abstract. It's "I have 200 domains renewing next month, which ones should I let drop and which ones are worth holding." That's the portfolio triage problem. Most domainers I talk to are spending $2-5K a year on renewals and gut-checking every one manually. The scoring engine is built to surface the 10% worth keeping and flag the 90% that are just burning cash.

The comp data isn't perfect, you're right. But when you're deciding between renewing 200 names, having even a rough signal based on actual aftermarket activity, keyword demand, and TLD liquidity is better than vibes. The tool doesn't tell you what a domain is worth to a specific buyer — nothing can. It tells you which of your domains have the highest probability of attracting a buyer at all.

That's the honest answer. If you've got a portfolio you're managing I'd be curious whether the scoring matches your gut on which names are dead weight.

 

[DomainArmer]

It keeps redirecting to an error page with:

Something went wrong​

This page encountered an error. You can try again or go back.

 

[domainvested]

It keeps redirecting to an error page with:

Something went wrong​

This page encountered an error. You can try again or go back.

Hey, sorry about that — I just pushed a deploy that had a broken import. Should be fixed now. If you try again it should work. Let me know if you still hit issues.

 

[DomainArmer]

Hey, sorry about that — I just pushed a deploy that had a broken import. Should be fixed now. If you try again it should work. Let me know if you still hit issues.

Great, let me try again

 

[DomainArmer]

Error still occuring

 

[domainvested]

Show attachment 298577

Error still occuring

Hey, appreciate you flagging this — that's on me. I've been shipping a bunch of updates today (new scoring features, portfolio tools, bulk import) and one of the deploys had a broken import that took the site down. It's fixed now and I just verified everything is back up.

The tool is still early and I'm actively building it out so there will be rough edges as things stabilize. That said, the core scoring engine is solid and the data pipeline is real. If you hit any more issues just let me know here or shoot me a message.

If you want to give it another shot: app.domainvested.com/check — drop any domain in there and it'll score it for free, no signup needed.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

real comparable sales -- right now sitting on about 46K actual transaction records

Are you tracking new sales?

 

[domainvested]

Are you tracking new sales?

We have a large set of comparable sales data that we use as reference points for scoring.

Always adding more.

 

[mohawki]

Error still occurring
Tried a few times

 

[domainvested]

Error still occurring
Tried a few times

Hey mohawki, sorry about that — our API server had a connectivity issue that's now resolved. Should be working. I just tested it and everything's coming back clean.

Try it again: app.domainvested.com/check — drop any domain in and it'll score it instantly.

If you're still seeing issues let me know and I'll dig into it. Appreciate the patience while we iron out the rough edges.

 

[Altetra]

The appraisal on home page does not work gives error, only the link you shared works.
So far I like the appraisals, very well done, thank you.
Now I see real value of my domains.
I try such tools as Saw,com, Estibot,com and many others, they return 0 or 100 value on really great domains, like on purpose.

 

[Altetra]

I created an account to test and see this error when I try.
Does this mean that one must buy subscription?

Error 405​

Method Not Allowed

 

[domainvested]

The appraisal on home page does not work gives error, only the link you shared works.
So far I like the appraisals, very well done, thank you.
Now I see real value of my domains.
I try such tools as Saw,com, Estibot,com and many others, they return 0 or 100 value on really great domains, like on purpose.

Really appreciate that feedback - hearing someone say they see real value in their domains is exactly what I built this for. The Estibot and Saw problem you're describing is real, most tools either lowball everything or wildly inflate prices because they don't weight the factors that actually matter for sellability.

The homepage scoring bug should be fixed now - sorry about that. We switched our site deployments to Vercel auto-deploy and it's taken a few iterations to ensure all the proper API endpoint mapping.

If you want to score a bunch at once, try the bulk import at app.domainvested.com/bulk - paste a list and it'll run them all. Would love to hear which domains surprised you with their scores.