DAN.COM Domain Marketplace (Official Thread)

[DAN.COM]

DAN.COM (formerly known as Undeveloped.com) is on a path to be become the biggest domain marketplace in the world. We use state of the art technology to solve everyday problems buyers and sellers in the domain industry face. At DAN.COM we focus on automating most processes required to buy & sell domains to increase a more efficient and active secondary market for domains.

What sets us apart is our strong focus on product development and customer satisfaction. We leave nothing to chance and every single feature and element we introduce is professionally and carefully designed and built.

DAN.COM is ranked in the top 5 best-rated marketplaces in the world (According to the biggest review platform Trustpilot) and in the domain industry, we're the domain marketplace with the highest rating with an average of 9,4 out of 10 points.

At DAN.COM you will get the highest value for the lowest commission around. Due to our domain transfer automation, we can offer significantly faster handling of domain transactions and payouts (usually within 24 hours) at the lowest fee charged by any domain marketplace.

We've been the first on many fronts and proudly will continue to keep innovating. We were the first to offer optimized for sale pages since 2013, the first to provide payment plans in the form of lease to own and rentals and also the first and only domain marketplace offering free SSL on all domains parked with us for over a year now.

Read more about DAN and our future plans here: https://blog.undeveloped.com/a-big-leap-forward-3a3cc59ed418

This thread is created to act as an informal communication board between the DAN team and the domain community. Feel free to post feedback here and to discuss how you use DAN.

What this thread is not meant for is support. Please contact our support team here: [email protected] when you need assistance.

Previous reviews under old brand: https://www.namepros.com/threads/undeveloped-com-experience.893201/

 

[DAN.COM]

Due to popular request, here's a sneak preview of DAN 2.0!

The customer area is getting revamped and we're adding over 100 new features this year. We're also adding a new feature to create your own lists and to implement bulk changes for a specific list only.

Above you see an example domain for sale page hosted at DAN.COM itself. We auto-generate a "brandable" card to offer at scale a brandable look and feel for all your domains managed with us. Sellers can decide which background color/style to use but also add their own logo's if that's preferred.

More details will be shared soon!

 

[DAN.COM]

We've been informed that there's quite some misinformation spreading about our revamped checkout. We'd like to share some insights about our checkout to clarify why we're so excited about our new checkout, and you should be too.

We've designed the checkout with care and so far the data since launch is looking very promising. It's too early to make a final conclusion yet and we will implement improvements over time when our data indicates that that is required. But so far, after a small hiccup on launch day, we're doing well.

Here's what makes our payment processing system stand out:

1: We offer all local payment solutions per market. Most of our competitors are focused on optimizing
for just one region. Domain buyers at Dan can pay with their local payment processor like Ideal, Mr cash, AliPay etc. These payment options do not introduce any payment fee.

2: All transactions handled by Dan under $999 do not include a payment fee.

3: For transactions from and above $1000 we've created an entirely new setup so we can offer local Bank Transfers which process within hours not days as an alternative that also introduces a 1% discount for the buyer. Unlike our previous checkout, all domain buyers in the new model get the easy local Bank Transfer option including the 1% discount.

Since our sellers pay a low commission at Dan and considering that Dan has built quite a reputation with repetitive domain/brand buyers, we expect more end-users to purchase their domain at Dan due to the 1% discount given which saves you inherently also commission that other platforms charge. Buying domains at Dan is the smartest thing a domain buyer can do. They'll get an exclusive 1% discount and enjoy a much faster and efficient domain ownership transfer.

In the new model, the seller even gets a 1% discount when the buyer pays with Bank Transfer. Even if you import a lead, and the lead pays with Bank Transfer, you only pay a 4% commission instead of our already low 5%.

4: We're the only marketplace that accepts credit card payments up to $100k (Afternic/ Sedo/ Escrow.com all limited this to just $5K). We process weekly multiple mid $xx,xxx transactions being paid with credit card at Dan. This alone is making all Dan sellers more money.

Meanwhile our other two direct competitors: Godaddy & Sedo both charge fees and or make their checkout pretty limited. Godaddy always ads a $19 renewal charge on all transactions while Sedo charges a 3% payment processing fee.

5: In the past 12-months we've implemented many changes in the background with the assistance of a dedicated Adyen payment specialist and a third-party PSP optimization specialist. We've for example increased the acceptance rate of credit card payments from the US by 24%! Which is huge! Our current credit card acceptance rate is higher than 95% of other e-commerce/marketplaces due to the strong focus we gave this part of the core service we offer.

In our revamped model, as mentioned earlier, we've made sure to always present the buyer with a discount alternative and free local payment processing alternatives next to the payment options that do have a 1% or max 2% payment processing fee involved.

We do not share these things publicly because we shouldn't have to. Especially not in a market where our product and processes are copied by all competitors, new and old.

Dan is the only party here that actually monitors checkout abandonment rates, checkout completion rates, conversion rates, and so on. The assumption being made by many non-active Dan sellers that we'd implement a new checkout that would hurt sales is one that we cannot comprehend. If after the first 30 days we observe a big checkout abandonment rate, we'll revert the payment fee update immediately.

We've built the most efficient domain marketplace existing today, active Dan sellers know this because we're continuously improving our processes on all fronts. All divisions at Dan (we're growing to 45 employees this year and 110 next year) have KPI's and each division, monthly makes sure to improve their division KPI's. The bigger we get, the more we can do. In the past years, we've operated with a very small development team. Now, 60% of our entire team is in product development!

We've started the process of raising €15M in growth capital this year to double down on everything we've planned next. That round will likely close before December. Our announcement blog post made it clear that what we've launched recently is the new foundation for us to be able to build & grow faster towards our end goal and so an in-between offering.

We've rejected 3 acquisition offers in the past 2 years alone from the biggest companies in the market because we're not closely done with reshaping the domain industry. In those discussions, we found out how effective our marketplace is performing compared to our competitors. The domain industry is still a niche market, which introduces benefits but also negative downsides. A small group of domainers that hardly sell any domains are the most vocal ones on forums like this one. This makes us less active here because we gain nothing from getting into endless discussions with people that are not receptive to anything we say.

Always ask Dan's staff about how things work at Dan when in doubt. We don't advise collecting information about Dan on forums because we're a fast-moving company that changes processes often.

We hope the above clarifies the checkout changes we've implemented and why Dan's checkout is still the best payment collection option offered in the market.

Kind regards,

Dan

 

[DAN.COM]

You ignored my message long time ago, and I forgot what I asked. Tons of time wasted.

Some questions I remember:

-Do you require ID?

- Do you track visitors? (real time IP) Do you track bidders ?

-Do you payout by Paypal? Wire?

-Can you show a list of past sales or top sales?

-Do you allow rent only? Other people said you change whois during lease, and this is good.

-How much info about sellers do you give to buyers?

-Can buyers contact sellers, during negotiation, or at other times?

-If there are some past bids which didn't lead to a sale, then will past bidders be informed in case of auctions, or when a BIN price added?

Hi TopDom,

This is the first time I see these questions, here are the answers:

-Do you require ID?

1: We do not. However, we do perform KYC on all first time sellers.

- Do you track visitors? (real time IP) Do you track bidders ?

2: Yes

-Do you payout by Paypal? Wire?

3: Yes

-Can you show a list of past sales or top sales?

4: No - however, Over $1M a month in domains are sold at DAN.

-Do you allow rent only? Other people said you change whois during lease, and this is good.

5: We offer Lease to own and domain Rentals. Both options you can set within seconds in your account.

-How much info about sellers do you give to buyers?

6: You decide which info you show to your buyers in your Privacy settings. Once you have a sale, do note that your billing details will be shown on the automated generated invoices we send to your buyer.

-Can buyers contact sellers, during negotiation, or at other times?

7: Yes.

-If there are some past bids which didn't lead to a sale, then will past bidders be informed in case of auctions, or when a BIN price added?

8: At the moment we don't do this yet.

I would simply advice to create an account and test DAN.COM. A lot of the questions you raise would have been answered by doing that.

Kind regards,

Reza

 

[tomcarl]

I am doing the same. ALL names will be removed by the end of today.
I do not want my customers incurring Dan's 2% hidden fees or be one of the guinea pigs while they test out the conversion drop off.
Tried constructive criticism, was censored, now just voting with my feet.

You join this community forum 6 days ago, as an unknown, and start spewing negativity all over this thread with complaints about a 2% fee at the same time Dan has revamped its entire platform and has been consistently raising the bar in our industry for nearly 5 years, charging a 9% commission on sales vs 10%, 15%, 20%, 35% elsewhere, payouts within 12-24 hours, the most modern landing pages out there, and you're complaining about 2% which is $20 out of $1000, and $200 out of a $10,000. This is an obstruction toward your sales despite all the conveniences Dan has to offer both buyers and sellers?

Who sent you?

 

[UmerK]

worried? now wouldn't that be something if any company started banning people cause they offer genuine honest opinion.. good or bad..luckily most companies have evolved beyond this primate ape behavior.

many companies pay people to find bugs... comments..we do it free.

Mention one company in the domain space that innovates and fixes bugs like DAN does.

Sometimes people just want to argue for nothing.

I have absolutely no doubt that for the services that Dan provides and their charges - they're one of the best in business when it comes to domain names.

It's perfectly fine for companies to launch new features in smaller batches, we heard a lot about Afternic 2.0 and so far we've only gotten a beta for listing - don't see this many people going after them or anything.

 

[Sameh]

It's even worse! We will be paid once a month for installment payments.

This was DAN's response when I asked if we would get paid once a month:

This is correct. For this transaction and other LTOs where the payment is received before the 7th of August, we will send the payout on the 7th of August. For LTO payments received after this date, we will notify sellers of the intended sending date once the payment is received.

Anyone from @DAN.COM care to explain the logic behind this horrible decision?

I decided to turn off installments on all my listings until they reverse this decision.

I make $xxx,xxx a year in sales using installments, but this is a cashflow business, and this decision doesn't make any sense.

 

[AEProgram]

I'm making a test using make offer only since a few days.
Once offer is accepted it seems most buyers takes time to pay or change their mind, decide not to pay, maybe fake buyers.

I found over the years in this business that if I accept an offer without countering it the person vanishes.

The person feels that if he offered less you would have accepted too and it ruins the perceived value of the domain too.

People want to know they got a deal, a steal, they want to be able to tell their friends "the guy wanted 2000 I got him down to 1600". Not, "I made a 2000 offer and he took it". When that happens everyone thinks the same, if you would've offered 100 he would've taken it too.

You also must realize that the pattern used by probably the most successful independent domain seller HD is BIN with financing option. When you do this you show confidence in price, the potential buyer only has one thing to think about, do I buy it upfront or do I make payments? They don't have to start looking and thinking what to offer. More importantly, they make a decision while they are hot on whatever idea they have. By the time you reply to an offer they might've cooled their feet or someone told them their idea is no good.

I use a mix of things on my domains, however, at some point I will just have all listed with a bin and financing.

 

[LaszloSchenk]

Good morning @tonyk2000 & @masterOfDomains,

Thank you for notifying us.

As mentioned before, we maintain a low-barrier platform to ensure a frictionless experience for all users. As such we expect users to only add domains that they personally own as there is no benefit in it for them to add domain names they do not own, considering they cannot be sold. To ensure you as an owner can bypass an invalid listing the ownership verification records have been added.

In addition, we continuously add processes to spot these listers and deal with them after inspecting their account. The seller as mentioned by @masterOfDomains got removed from the platform and their access was revoked permanently.

Soon, additional processes will be introduced that will reduce the chances of any such listers appearing again significantly as well.

All the best,

 

[Embrand]

Just got an offer today and was pleased to see it now includes buyer's company name (if applicable). That is a great feature, since looking up the IP address will mostly not reveal who is behind the offer.

So many great things to say about DAN. Seriously, Sedo, I would worry if I were you...

 

[LaszloSchenk]

Good morning all,

We wanted to give you an update regarding the global outbreak of the Corona virus. Europe is currently is coping with a massive outbreak of the virus. Due to this the Dutch government has stated a country wide lockdown causing a lot of businesses to temporarily close down. We want to assure the platform users that DAN.COM will remain fully operation at all times. Regardless of the outbreak it will be business as usual for our users. DAN.COM took the required measures ensuring no user will experience a difference in service delivered.

Have a great day!

 

[DAN.COM]

Congrats Dan sellers!

Amazing milestone hit:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1443855238650372098

+€6M in sales processed in September.

 

[DomainRecap]

I really dislike this "change for the sake of change" mentality, where Dan has totally clogged up the My Domains panel with every piece of useless info you can imagine, making it virtually unusable due to the lack of space and abundance of numbers.

I literally expected to see a new column labelled "The Kitchen Sink".

And to make matters worse, they get rid of one of their best features - a valuable mechanism to track the latest views by potential buyers. It truly boggles the mind.

 

[doofer]

"This new commission model rewards sellers choosing to do more business with our platform by using any of our for sale lander options"

How is increasing commission by 67% rewarding for the seller !?

 

[DAN.COM]

Quick update:

We just deployed the frequently requested feature so you can set a different currency per domain listing directly from your portfolio:

Kind regards,

Dan

 

[DAN.COM]

@LaszloSchenk
just sheer curiosity.. can u briefly comment how u guys forsee the recent purchase of uniregistry by godaddy, as impacting DAN.... positive or negative... or basically fully neutral..... thanks!

Hi Alcy,

For the industry, the acquisition is not that great as the industry loses another company that brings unique features & services to the market. For competition we need a healthy and vibrant landscape of competitors and Uni joining Godaddy will just make Godaddy's monopoly just stronger.

For Godaddy, the deal is great: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4281920-godaddy-decelerating-growth-adds-bearish-sentiment

They were seeing declining revenue ratios and they now increase your topline again with this acquisition by an estimated $80M-$100M a year.

For DAN, the deal is great as well. We have now one big competitor less and Uniregistry sellers will likely be welcomed with increased commission rates which makes DAN more attractive.

Also, don't forget that Godaddy is owned by a private equity firm, and all they care about is to squeeze more margin to increase Godaddy's share price. This is why we're positive about this acquisition but again for the industry overall, this isn't a celebratory moment at all.

Lastly, at DAN we're building the future infrastructure of the industry and we're playing the long game.

There's a reason why we've grown the total sales volume at DAN.COM last month alone with 31%. We deliver what we promise and we do not want to generate a profit in the next 10 years. We keep re-investing our revenue in the product and service. Two weeks ago we've also raised capital to invest more heavily in our domain transfer infrastructure, a new open domain distribution network and our own product & services to name some.

Nobody in the market is doing what we're doing in the long run and we guarantee you that our team is hungrier than ever before to keep shaking things up .

Kind regards,

Reza

 

[LaszloSchenk]

just sheer curiosity.. are u like gone and out after gd sale? u been good sport and support here and elsewhere..

Good morning @alcy,

I will not be going anywhere. In fact, you can expect the same team to assist you with anything, now and in the future.

Have a great day.

 

[Acroplex]

Good morning @Future Sensors,

You are permitted to maintain a different price at Dan as opposed to the Afternic Network while integrating through our marketplace. This is why the functionality is present to alter prices specifically for those domain names that you have integrated in the Afternic Network.

Have a great weekend ahead.

"Permitted" isn't the right word here. It is a right, not a permission to set up prices however we want. I understand this makes little sense when you're just an employee of a company, but consumer rights still go a long way and not just in the US but in Europe too. The tirade by the Afternic account on Twitter over forced price uniformity is evidence of violating consumer rights.

 

[411domains]

d morning @lovely4ever,

Thank you for sharing your concern. As always, with any changes taking place on the platform we monitor the outcome continuously. We have noticed no major changes in traffic since the release of the mandatory cookie policy offerings on landing pages. It is something that was inevitable as we are required to offer to these cookies.

Best regards,

@DAN.COM

We get that they're mandatory, but must they be so big?

The number of sales is the only number I care about and when cumbersome cookie policies like this are implemented into a platform, that number significantly declines.

Landscape view - DAN.com looks more like a cookie platform than a domain sales platform.

At least in portrait view, with the brandable template selected, we can see that a domain name is for sale.

 

[doofer]

Good afternoon everyone,
In July, we implemented a couple of policy changes to both new and existing Lease to Own transactions. While these changes were described in Product Update #9, we didn’t explain them in enough detail. Our aim at Dan is to be transparent, and we missed the mark. For that, we’re sorry.

We heard your request for more detail, so we have published a blog explaining these changes and why we made them: https://news.dan.com/229409-recent-lease-to-own-policy-changes-at-dan

If you have any questions, our support team is ready to answer them.

Best regards,
Dan.com

Or to put it simply, we're potentially going to hang on to your money for 13 - 16 days before paying you.

 

[Maxxo]

Hey DAN, why is everyone else in the world outside the EU forced to see annoying cookie policy popup? You should just make it for the EU regime citizens. It makes a very BAD first impression to potential buyers on the domain landers! Fellow Namepros users, please like this comment if you want to get some action from GoDaddy woops I mean DAN

 

[DAN.COM]

They can't chat with domain owner...
So I don't see how this chat helps in terms of sales/negotiations even if it is not blocked by the browser add-on.

Often buyers have questions, we do not inform our sellers when we actively help their buyers but in the background, our team is working hard to close all qualified buyers that present themselves via support.

I've said this before: if our sellers don't sell, naturally, we do not generate a commission. So we have a strong incentive to make sure that all buyers that we can convert into sales actually convert.

We're also not a dinosaur from the industry that got started in the 90' and is fine with whatever they are used to doing.

There's no team in this industry as hungry and hardworking as our team but most of that work is not observed or seen by outsiders. I love our community and the people backing us so we can continue to get better at what we do but it is sometimes a bit painful to see how negative Namepros users can be and this thread is a good example of that, unfortunately.

PS: My wife and I are expecting our first baby girl one of these days, so I won't be as active as usual on the forum.

 

[DAN.COM]

@Reza Can you already know tell us if the new sales lander will have new installment and rental options? Such as plans with interest or a larger down payment than the regular installments? Thanks.

Hi Embrand,

We're now doing final tests on the new Lease To Own model and I expect us to be able to launch that new feature within 2 weeks. The fully revamped landers Laszlo was referring to won't be launched in 2019 since that's quite a big project we're working on.

We've observed that down payments are counterproductive and won't include that option. It introduces friction that we're trying to take away so you sell more domains. Your buyers prefer monthly payments for a reason (cash flow / budget). During our customer development for the new model we observed adding a downpayment option introduces friction and also invites the buyer to negotiate about both the price and the down payment.

What we did instead is to increase our maximum Lease To Own term from 2 years to 5 years. We also introduce a new markup model where the buyer pays a markup fee of up to 30% for long term purchases.

This way, as a seller, once the domain gets sold in a lot of installments, you simply make more money as a trade off for getting your full payment delayed.

The best part of the new model is that you as the seller, never have to negotiate anymore since we make the domain affordable to 95% of all possible buyers of your domain. Sellers that enable the new Lease To Own option should see a very significant increase in sales after enabling the feature.

The feature is also designed and optimized in a way that the buyer can simply pick the terms that fit his or her budget by simply moving a slidebar which updates the deal terms for the buyer instantly on his/her screen.

We can't wait to start offering the new model, as mentioned before the results are quite amazing in terms of conversion.

Here are already some screenshots of the Beta version for context:

Kind regards,

Reza

 

[DAN.COM]

I personally like the redesign but I'm disappointed that's all it is. The last version was also pretty great design-wise.

I expected functionality upgrades but I haven't seen any thus far.

You still can't offer/set up an installment plan via the negotiation window, still no down-payment option.

When making a test offer, I noticed buyers now have to insert a "verification token" instead of just clicking on the link to confirm their offer. I don't think that was necessary. I would've also liked to see a tab on the dashboard that includes unconfirmed offers, it's data that could add value and would cost Dan nothing to share them.

In the dan blog I see that buyers now get charged extra for paypal/credit cards, is this right @DAN.COM? Or just a test?

Due to all complaints about too many fake offers, we've indeed completely revamped our make offer flow to make sure our sellers get better-validated offers.

The checkout is revamped as well with the help of a lot of buyers that we interviewed. Can you please send us via private message including the checkout link you're using? You should get a 1% discount for paying with a wire transfer like below:

So when buyers pay via bank transfer, the buyer gets a 1% discount but also the seller! If the buyer pays via Bank Transfer, your commission paid to Dan automatically is lowered by 1%.

Not all payment options have an additional fee but the most expensive ones like credit cards do in the new flow.

What we've deployed today is definitely not just a visual update by the way. It might seem like that but under the hood, a lot has changed which allows us now to push more features and updates more frequently. Stay tuned! This is just an in-between update as we didn't want to shock our users too much since we know you use Dan daily.

The entire customer area will transform in the coming weeks, new for sale page themes will be introduced, and more!

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Dunno what you and alcy are smoking back east but wow man. Jurgen happens to be one of the smartest people here, he just knows everything. Does not work for dan lol. Hopefully mods will delete your off topic post and mine. Lazlo and company are gonna have about 20 pages of crap chit chat to go thru on monday. Maybe thats why bigshots use twitter more, less background noise

Do you work with/for, or are affiliated in any way, with DAN?