reviews I built a private domain portfolio manager that runs on your own Cloudflare account - mgr.domains

[ByteTheName]

Hello NamePros ! posted this in a couple of threads before i realised there's a dedicated "reviews" thread (copied this text from the other threads i posted in) .. 3rd time lucky ? (fingers crossed) (and no more spamming in other threads, i promise)

TLDR:
https://mgr.domains - A private domain portfolio management application that runs in your own Cloudflare environment.
There is a DEMO linked from the home page - so you can get a feel for how the app is, the features, etc.

Long version:
Sorry my first-ish contribution is one of self promotion.

I suppose I have always been a developer before I was a domainer. So whilst getting to grips with the industry and understanding the ways of working and waiting for my domains to sell (whilst buying more and losing my mind managing them) I have been building a (yet another ?) domain portfolio management application called mgr.domains (https://mgr.domains) the last few months - with the main differentiator being that runs on your own Cloudflare infrastructure and not on mine or a central repository like common SaaS models. ( as i was never comfortable handing over my API keys to someone and I don't expect anyone to do the same !)

This makes the initial setup of your "workspace" a little different - you cannot login with Google or create a user account on my site, but instead use your own Cloudflare account, and create a API token and pass it to the app during the setup phase and the app does the deployment for you on your cloudflare infra. (I have added short videos that show how to do it - but for people here who do DNS management whilst sleeping, this should be easy ! )

The app in its current state is a "Manual" one .. you would need to add domains manually, download CSVs, upload CSVs, etc, but some little things like getting whois data, to fetch registrar info, like expiry dates, landers, etc happens automatically , and this runs from the Cloudflare worker deployed in your own account.
THe current feature set focuses mainly on:
1. portfolio tracking (pricing, status, notes)
2. renewal + expiry visibiity
3. bulk editing
4. marketplace ready CSVs (for about 7-8 marketplaces, but i will be adding more - as soon as i finish testing each one etc)
5. audit trails - you can see the changes/history of requests, etc

The future feature set i plan on developing (in progress) are the usual suspects, like registrar sync, DNS/Nameserver updates, Marketplace sync (all where available) - I'm doing this for myself anyway, but in a production ready way - because I want the app to handle marketplace/registrar API keys etc in a secure manner, no leaking, no storing in plain text, etc, all in your cloudflare accounts, but i want to keep them secure too !

Its still early and would genuinely appreciate any feedback from experienced domainers such as yourselves, around any issues or workflow gaps (maybe things i did right/could do better).

A big thing I'm focused on is making sure people are comfortable with the privacy model and user driven work (no automating when not asked for, etc) before expanding into the phase 2 features (as i call it).

All in all, in its current state, the app is a glorified spreadsheet , with the formulae pre-added for you - hopefully without the usual headaches.

Oh and its free in its current state (and will be free forever) ! The Cloudflare free tiers should be plenty to handle 1000s of domains - which is one of the main reasons I choose Cloudflare - so as a user, you would just signup for a free Cloudflare account.

happy to answer any questions you have and would appreciate any feedback that would help me guide the development path of this app !

 

[ByteTheName]

I suspect it is ok to share any updates going on in the app in this thread. I think its a nice way to hold myself accountable and also let any one chime in if you find any of the updates interesting.

Because this app is not yet industry standard , i have created a youtube channel that has setup guides and i can add any user guides if necessary. Word of warning though, its very very silent !

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/@mgrdomains
The app's changelog can be found here: https://mgr.domains/changelog

latest update:
Added flows to handle "dropped" domains .. Realised that we cannot just "delete" a domain from a portfolio, because it could be listed on marketplaces, etc. and it is our responsibility to clean up those domains ..
so instead, the app now "drops" domains - basically archives it, and provides "sanitization" CSVs for the relevant portfolios, and this view can be seen on the dashboard.
The saintization flow needs to happen when a domain is marked as "sold" or "leased" or "not for sale" and now, when it is "archived". The links in dashboard should take you to the relevant sections ..

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

Great initiative. Good luck with your project!

 

[ByteTheName]

Great initiative. Good luck with your project!

Thanks so much. Appreciate the encouragement!

 

[ByteTheName]

Another weekly-ish update (what i hope to be a recurrent thing)
Before i begin, massive thanks to @Acroplex for the shoutout on the blog (Yay I made it ! )
Also, for anyone new, this is a FREE (and private) domain management tool , in case you are wondering, and the initial setup is slightly different.


TLDR:
1. Implemented a lander health scanner that continually checks for the lander health (not all at once but few at a time and never stops !)
2. The users have an option to connect their telegram account receive lander health updates (along with /search <keyword> like options
3. A small update to indicate the numebr of domains that are not listed in any of the currently supported marketplaces (the user has to basically upload the CSV files from the marketplaces to let the app know the listings)

Onto the update .. I was wondering what I should add, and decided to take a break from the serious features like registrar sync, i began working on some vanity feature, like Telegram updates.
And halfway through that implementation, i got chatting to a domainer on X, ( Yibecoder ) and they indicated concerns around the landing pages' health.

I realised the lander health scan fit perfectly with my vanity feature
The limitations of Cloudflare remained, however. The app is designed for users on Cloudflare free tiers (so you pay nothing anywhere really !)

So got onto implementation + bugs + tests + fixes + coffee and i finally have a working lander health checker (it was fantastic to work on the Cloudflare's CRON jobs - which i was meaning to work on when I began implementing watchlists, etc)

Anyway, since this is a marketplace operations related information, I placed it under the Marketplace Ops section ..
I also added a small change - to show the number of "unlisted" domains - or dead assets (I have 11 from my meagre collection which i didn't realise)
The pricing anomalies shows that 113 of my domains are not consistently prices across marketplaces - so someone might purchase a domain you listed for $100 on Sedo but you have it listed for $1000 on Afternic, and so on ..

Below is a screenshot of the dashboard view ..

I currently categorise the lander errors as:
BROKEN - when we show "this domain might be available" like message
SSL_ERROR: WHen the lander does not resolve - loss of possible sales ?
Timeout: I have a 4 second timeout for landers (another free Cloudflare limitation) and any of the landers that do not resolve within the 4 second timeout are categorised as timeouts
DNS_DRIFT: Whilst investigating use cases, i went down a rabbit hole of DNS hijacking, etc etc .. So an initial scan is considered a "baseline" and then any changes to the CNAME/A records is considered a DNS Drift .. the user has an option to accept these new records as the new baseline and the app marks it clean (and removes the dns drift error)

The neat part about this is the CRON jobs keep going on and on so the health check, which happens not all at once, but continually and you have an option to get telegram updates if any of the landers fail (and an option to silence the notification if that expected by the user)

The scan details are available when you click a domain and go to its "tech" page (or click on the red shield icon)

If any of you get around to using the app and testing it, appreciate any feedback (good/bad/ugly).

And if you have any issues setting it up, you can add a question here, or send me a message on X or send me an email (all listed in the contact page) and i'll do my best to sort the issues out !

 

[DomainArmer]

Very interesting platform. Good luck...

 

[ByteTheName]

Very interesting platform. Good luck...

Thanks so much. Appreciate the encouragement!!

 

[DomainArmer]

Thanks so much. Appreciate the encouragement!!

You are welcome

 

[ByteTheName]

Small (but i think useful) midweek update to the app.

I decided to reprice some domains and used the app to export it as a CSV to upload on marketplaces. After a couple of failed uploads, it got me thinking, I really need to harden the marketplace CSV exports (which is pretty much the bread and butter of the app in its current form)

This thought process also started because I noticed when I export my domains from Afternic, the Show Buy now, show Lease to own, show make offer are set to N and most disturbingly, the Hidden is set to Y !

My initial way of doing it was "silently" try to fix the errors - for eg: if the min price for Afternic was not set, i would default to 20 and so on ..
But thought about it for a couple of days, and realised no self respecting domain investor would want the app to correct their mistakes

So instead, i now show (in nice red colours) errors in teh marketplace CSVs. And when the user clicks "Export", i also show what is wrong with the CSV.
The user can then decide to either:
1. Go back and fix the issues (theres a "copy" the domain names to clipboard, so one can copy and paste the offending domains in the search bar to filter for them and fix the issues - this would be updated later to directly open those domains)
OR
2. Export anyway (I did not want to gatekeep or "nanny mode" the domain investors by trying to silently fix the issues -which, if done incorrectly, would be wholly my fault !)

(I also temporarily removed Unstoppable & Dynadot as marketplaces - because their CSV import requirements are different depending on if they're with UD or not (and same with DYnanot)

If any of you try it out, please do let me know if this is useful or not.
Always here to help out with any issues you are facing, etc.

Disclaimer: These are not my domains. I copied a few from today's Namebio's sales for demo purposes !

 

[ByteTheName]

Another update to the app.
Added DIFF view and a domain audit view to the domains.

This idea was given by a user on reddit - indicating there has to be an auditing system (especially important after the automation flows come in) but added this, and is in place now .. ethings like price changes etc are recorded, so one can always come back after month and see what their afternic price was a month ago before they changed it - and so on.
The link to the domain's audit log is conveniently located in the "Tech" tab of the domain - along with the lander health info, etc

Also the DIFF view - when bulk editing 100s of domains and clicking apply, the user is given a chance to review their changes and select all/any domains they want to apply their changes to. (fat finger syndrome - as they called it !)

Quite happy with how these have turned out!
if any of you do manage to try out the app (which is free, etc), let me know if you have any suggestions, etc !

Disclaimer: These are not my domains. Just random ones picked from Namebio etc for demo purposes.

Happy sales !

 

[ByteTheName]

Another update to the app.

No new features (yet), but more of a "hardening the app" ..

I received a support email from a user, indicating they have having trouble setting up the app.
After a brief chat, realised the user's geo location caused their ISP not to recognise the user's Cloudflare worker's domain, and was timing out. They also sorted it out using WARP 1.1.1.1
I got lucky that the user was a developer themselves, so we were able to share logs, etc via email, and sort the issue out.

This is a private app setup, so I'm completely blind to the errors/issues users face as there are no analytics, etc., and this is something I don't want to change - I would never want to collect analytics, not or in the future - but I have had to reach a middle ground. The setup might be a bit finicky at times - so i now show the logs to the user, and an option to copy them / email them and most importantly, "Retry" the setup process, so if the user decides to send me logs, i will not be completely bling to the error etc.

been testing this all week and works as expected, and something i should have thought of myself before releasing the app, but its never too late to do some things

Happy sales !!

PS: I've thought of a couple of things that will work well in the app and have begun my work on implementing them ! Updates will be posted here as always ! Also always open to feature suggestions !

 

[AvaSharkawy]

Great update, would be helpful for visibility from your side
keep it up

 

[ByteTheName]

Great update, would be helpful for visibility from your side
keep it up

Thanks ! (Hope you faced no more issues since the above setup issue)

 

[ByteTheName]

Small (but i think important) update to start off the week !

TLDR:
When syncing the user's domains with marketplace CSVs, the UI now shows if any domains have gone missing from the marketplace CSV.

I was on X one day, and read a user complain about a domain missing from their Afternic listings ..

It got me thinking, with about 200+ domains, unless I keep an eye pretty much all the time, I wouldn't know if any domain is missing from my list, and even if I get the counts, etc, it would take me a bit longer to identify which of the domain from my list is not present in my afternic (or any other marketplace's) listings.

So I've updated the app to verify if any domains are missing from the CSV at the time of importing into the app, and also when it was last synced.

This flow is done via the "Add Domains" -> "Marketplace Sync" and upload the Afternic CSV (or Sedo, Atom, etc CSVs)

Interested to know what you think of this addition !
If you do try out the app (its free !), do let me know if you are facing any problems or would like anything added that would make your life easier.

Also, for the sake of transparency, all changes done to the app are published as part of the changelog at: https://mgr.domains/changelog

Happy sales !!

 

[aoxborrow]

this is cool and a good idea!

 

[ByteTheName]

this is cool and a good idea!

Thanks so much ! Appreciate the kind words - from a fellow developer!