domains GoDaddy acquiring Uniregistry's registrar & marketplace, and Name Administration's domain portfolio

[equity78]

The first blockbuster deal of the decade. GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE: GDDY), the company that empowers everyday entrepreneurs, today announced it is acquiring Uniregistry's leading domain registrar and marketplace businesses. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close sometime in Q2 2020. The Uniregistry domain registry is not part of the … [Read more...]

 

[Silentptnr]

Can you say monopoly?

 

[Rob Monster]

Bad day for escrow .com. Uni had to use them for a lot of their own sales (specific Cayman jurisdiction, /offshore/, special attention from financial institutions --> not easy to receive $$$ by wire internationally etc.). NameFind does not need to.

Like any acquisition in our industry, cannot be beneficial to customers. However, since many bulk customers leaved Uni due to one reason or another in recent years, an effect would not necessary be critical or globally noted.

GoDaddy was wise - not acquired the registry part. An extra proof that ngtlds are barely needed or wanted...

Kudos to @Rob Monster for predicting this. Hope that Epik will remain independent for at least 2-3 extra years. Or maybe more?

No, not bad.

They should buy Escrow.com next - Uni is already tightly integrated into Escrow.com and would be a required part of the mop-up operation. Escrow needs an exit.

The parent company's stock trades by appointment and keeps falling:

The market cap is about $200 million and comes with a Freelancer network which GD can use across its network of small business clients.

However, no need to chase the stock because the stock price is falling to the price at which the deal gets done. Escrow.com's cash flow from in China is under challenge now.

I bet that Escrow.com deal is done within 90 days and possibly much faster than that since the signs are too obvious and the industry is not that capable of keeping secrets.

 

[BrandCollectors.com]

that moment when you have no domains neither with gd nor with uni

 

[Embrand]

It seems GoDaddy got a steal, according to their own valuation

uniregistry.com

Estimated Value: $11,222

 

[bmugford]

GoDaddy is not rebranding. Please.

They have spent way too much money on that branding over the years.
They are the only well known domain company out there.

Brad

 

[SuperBrander]

Big fish eats small fish. Never liked Uniregistry's marketplace. Waaaaay too much emphasis on new extensions to the point where their internal search engine favors them over the .com. Try searching for one of your domains there and see how weird it all looks from the POV of a potential buyer. Personally I'm not a fan of their interface as well. We'll have to wait and see what Godaddy will do with them. GD offering installments might be cool. Interesting times.

 

[Joe Styler]

This acquisition shows that GoDaddy knows Uniregistry is good.
On a phone call with a GoDaddy rep several months ago, I mentioned that most of my domains are elsewhere and he asked where. I told him they’re mostly at Uniregistry and he asked why and I explained that it’s far easier to manage my domains there.

I welcome the proposed integration with Afternic DLS but I really hope GoDaddy doesn’t make too many changes to Uniregistry and their user interface because GoDaddy’s own website is a labyrinth of too many pages and a simple action that takes 5 seconds on Uniregistry takes 5 minutes on GoDaddy.

I’m also concerned about pricing because even though Uniregistry isn’t the cheapest, their renewals are half what GoDaddy charges. While GoDaddy may be able to charge end users that sort of price, domain investors are aware that they have many other options of registrar. This is one reason why I transferred all of my good domains away from GoDaddy and the ones I left there are expiring

Probably like many others, I registered my very first domain at GoDaddy and I no longer use them, but if GoDaddy handles this well and switches to Uniregistry pricing (which I doubt they'll do), I can see myself staying (for the management system that Uniregistry created). I currently have my high value domains on Uniregistry landers with brokerage and my standard domains listed on and pointed to DAN.

So GoDaddy, please, keep it simple, and keep it affordable.
Please don’t kill a good platform just to make it bad. User interface and price are very important.

@Paul Nicks @Joe Styler
@Quintin

Interestingly enough that rep has a lot of pull in the company. He said "Guys, I can't get Ryan to move his names here and I really want to help him. Can we just buy whatever companies he uses?" A couple months later - Boom.

Seriously though this acquisition was part of a bigger plan to help our Domain Investors become even more successful. Bulk management is important to us. We are going to be smart about how we integrate and seek to bring added value to our customers wherever they keep their domains. I think the purchase and recent comments from our CEO at Namescon show that we have a serious commitment to helping our domain investor customers be successful.

 

[tonyk2000]

Bad day for escrow .com. Uni had to use them for a lot of their own sales (specific Cayman jurisdiction, /offshore/, special attention from financial institutions --> not easy to receive $$$ by wire internationally etc.). NameFind does not need to.

Like any acquisition in our industry, cannot be beneficial to customers. However, since many bulk customers leaved Uni due to one reason or another in recent years, an effect would not necessary be critical or globally noted.

GoDaddy was wise - not acquired the registry part. An extra proof that ngtlds are barely needed or wanted...

Kudos to @Rob Monster for predicting this. Hope that Epik will remain independent for at least 2-3 extra years. Or maybe more?

 

[lennco]

This is starting to look like the Hotel Booking site industry.

Most don't know that all those Hotel booking sites you see advertise on TV (from Hotels.com, Trivago, Hotwire, Kayak ect) are all owned by just 2 companies.

Expedia and Booking.com

 

[bmugford]

It really makes you wonder why the gTLD registry isn't included. Surely if they wanted it they could have had it as part of the acquisition?

I am surprised they were not interested in such gems as .hiphop and .guitars and their close to 2,000 combined registrations.

Brad

 

[Silentptnr]

Holy moly! Just got the email.

Now gd can dump their site and relabel the uni site.

 

[Josytal]

We need competition, so can never be good for the industry as a whole. Too much concentrated in one, very rigid hand.

 

[Samer]

i hope Godaddy makes Uni brokers chill out

they overbearing relentless with the emails

Samer

 

[wwwweb]

Big fish eats small fish. Never liked Uniregistry's marketplace. Waaaaay too much emphasis on new extensions to the point where their internal search engine favors them over the .com. Try searching for one of your domains there and see how weird it all looks from the POV of a potential buyer. Personally I'm not a fan of their interface as well. We'll have to wait and see what Godaddy will do with them. GD offering installments might be cool. Interesting times.

Advantage to Uniregistry’s marketplace was to self close deals at 3%, and put other fees on buyers, with godaddy pushing 20% is that something that is going to change?

 

[johnn]

There is no detail information yet as the deal is not closed until June 2020.
No one knows anything yet. All is just speculations.
This thread will be very long with all the professional psychics here.

 

[wwwweb]

Already regged So they will have to use something else...

Domain Name: unidaddy.com
Updated Date: 2019-11-15T15:20:17Z
Creation Date: 2018-11-14T21:23:38Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2020-11-14T21:23:38Z
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrant Organization: UNIVERSITY OF POLAND SP. Z O. O.

Technically speaking, even independent Uni was unable to care of their new registrar platform. Too many bugs, including backend issues. GD is not exactly the one who may help them. So, it is likely that the Uniregistry platform will be replaced with GD frontend/backend, earlier or later.

Uniregistry doesn't spend money like Godaddy does to be on every channel, and radio station, Godaddy is a household brand, if Uni is integrated into Godaddy, nobody outside the domainer space will even notice.

Uni was sold because you had a willing seller, with a lot of moving parts that would give Godaddy quick acceleration in some of their verticals. With a new CEO under pressure to make things happen, and get the stock price up, it just seems to have worked out. Given how hard they negotiate on domains, can you imagine the negotiation for all the domains.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

This is a super-smart move by GoDaddy and shows their commitment to the domain name investing industry and the aftermarket. It's obviously terrific news for Frank Schilling. One of the true innovators in our industry during the last decade.

As a GoDaddy customer (I have most of my .com's with them) I am also excited about this statement from Paul Nicks, GoDaddy's VP of Aftermarket:

“The [Uniregistry] registrar experience will become our domain investor experience,” he said. “Today, you’re toggling between [advanced and regular views]. I want a customer to be able to toggle right into that investor experience.”

If the above will be really implemented that well remains the big question. GoDaddy essentially takes a big competitor and huge innovator off the market which is never good for the industry as a whole.

I doubt the news will be received that well by Uniregistry's sales platform and registrar customers. Many of them are with Uni because they have an aversion to GoDaddy and vice versa.

At Efty, we've seen a huge influx in signups since the news broke and I am sure some domaining friendly registrars will see an influx in names being moved too in the coming months as the acquisition will be finalized.

 

[LarryDomain]

I will be moving my domains for sure. Starting tonight.

 

[wwwweb]

I will be moving my domains for sure. Starting tonight.

Where are you headed, Epik?

Maybe a good time for some registrars to have promos for transfers.

 

[wwwweb]

Godaddy also bought Brandsight in this deal, so Uni was probably an investor in it.

Mark Monitor, Safe Names got some new competitors.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

For those at NamesCon, were there any whispers of this in Austin? It must have been in works for some time, and a great accomplishment if no one leaked any hint of it.

There are a few threads around this topic. I posted this link to an informative article by Paul Nicks on exactly what is involved. Uniregistry as a registrar will continue to operate independently, but now as an Afternic fast transfer premium network partner.

Bob

 

[wwwweb]

For those at NamesCon, were there any whispers of this in Austin? It must have been in works for some time, and a great accomplishment if no one leaked any hint of it.

There are a few threads around this topic. I posted this link to an informative article by Paul Nicks on exactly what is involved. Uniregistry as a registrar will continue to operate independently, but now as an Afternic fast transfer premium network partner.

Bob

What advantage is it to them to keep the Uni, Uniregistry brand, when they spend so much marketing under Godaddy.

They solved their Domains Manager UI issue, they beefed up NameFind with 350K names.

They went into the corporate branding business with BrandSight

They filled a lot of holes with this deal, will be interesting when the numbers come out in the filings, as it has to be huge.

The new CEO gets his big moment also, who doesn’t like a acquisition on the corporate side. If you ever wanted a Name Admin name, once it hits NameFind it will get a big haircut from some of their asks.

 

[bmugford]

Does this sale include all the new extensions that Frank tried to gouge registrants on like .Guitars, .HipHop, and others by grossly raising the price? The ones where GoDaddy dropped them because of Frank's actions.

I can't believe they would have any interest in those.

Brad

 

[wwwweb]

Does this sale include all the new extensions that Frank tried to gouge registrants on like .Guitars, .HipHop, and others where GoDaddy dropped them because of Frank's actions?

I can't believe they would have any interest in those.

Brad

No, extensions are not included, to much of a legal headache probably. Basically namefind is on steroids now.

Maybe they have a new domains manager, I am
sure their engineers will be dissecting all that code, and trying to integrate it.

The new CEO caught a break, right place, right time, willing seller.