My Efty Experience (So Far) - Quick Review

[DomainAuction]

Hi Name Pros,

I have been using Efty for nearly 2 weeks now and would like to share overral rating out of 5 + cons.

Features: 3 / 5

• Lacks basic key features to maintain trust with buyer + payment processor once a domain name has sold (E.g., there are no automated emails for sold domains, no 302 redirect of sold domain to homepage, no marking of a sold domain as "sold" to prevent a double-buy which could result in a refund request, etc.)
• Super basic and branded 404 pages (... they should not be branded at all)
• No XML sitemap (had to create a subdomain to host my root / marketplace's sitemap)
• No out-the-box solution for a CDN such as CloudFlare (although I got mine to work)
• Minimal automation; the marketplace owner must manually key-in quite a bit post-sale or upon domain import to properly calculate figures such as Investment / Revenue / Sold / Fees, etc.
• No Installment / Payment Plan feature (super important and highly requested; 100% of my premium domain acquisitions for the past 3 years have used this similar feature on other marketplaces)
• The "Buy Now" feature redirects to their own branded checkout screen that is most likely questionable to the customer + it's not customizable. *The customer should never leave the custom marketplace, nor should Efty assume what converts best?

Support: 3.5 / 5

Fairly new, but support has been super quick. However, by ignoring highly requested features and/or lacking some major ones; must give a 3.5 / 5 based on that alone; otherwise a 5 (so far) for sure.

Stability: 1 / 5

OK; here's where the #1 problem is that should be fixed right away; their servers have been down several hours within a day nearly every day since subscribing. Either that OR WAY TOO SLOW. No matter how you slice it; it's true. What good is any of this if my traffic can't load the 'For Sale' landing pages? So far today alone there has been a total of 3 hours of down-time spread out. This requires immediate attention.

*I will update this when or if ever needed.
**Major potential, and I am a happy customer (for now) and will be a much happier customer if the server issues are fixed.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Been away from domaining for a while, contemplating building back up again.

A bit has changed so trying to catch up.

Just looked at Efty, I did a trial when it was brand new.... I have to say, it doesn't bode very well that 3 of the 5 customer testimonials are from customers who are no longer with Efty.

Two URL's lead to Efty shops.
Two URL's lead to websites hosted elsewhere / self-hosted.
One URL leads to a HugeDomains sales lander.

And what is particularly astonishing about that is that it appears the owners of Efty don't care enough about the project now to fix that, amateur and doesn't fill me with enough confidence to give them moolah!

Have they pretty much given up?

It would be nice if Dan.com offered a custom domain though and allowed people to set their own default search order on their port pages (rather than shortest domain first). I mean, if I owned an incredible one word premium I wouldn't want nonsense like 45xh.com at the top of my portfolio page.

We haven't given up. Quite the opposite. The number of sellers with Efty is at an all-time high and we're in the process of launching a complete redux of the sales platform soon. This includes a new homepage, and perhaps it would be good to include some fresh testimonials there too

As you know, Efty offers much more than a "domain shop" and not every seller uses the marketplace feature. Nonetheless, we have shipped three brand-new themes for the marketplace during the last 12 months. You can see an example at NameRockstar.com for one of these.

As for the testimonials, four out of five of these gentlemen are still active, happy Efty users but some of them have changed their store-front as they either no longer see the benefit of showing their entire inventory on a marketplace or because they expanded their business and started offering additional services such as brokerage and therefore had a need for a more content-rich website. I understand that it could be confusing or give the wrong signals if those links lead to a non-Efty-powered site so I'll see if we can give that an update. Thanks for the heads up!

Stay tuned for a big update soon.

 

[DomainGist]

We haven't given up. Quite the opposite. The number of sellers with Efty is at an all-time high and we're in the process of launching a complete redux of the sales platform soon. This includes a new homepage, and perhaps it would be good to include some fresh testimonials there too

As you know, Efty offers much more than a "domain shop" and not every seller uses the marketplace feature. Nonetheless, we have shipped three brand-new themes for the marketplace during the last 12 months. You can see an example at NameRockstar.com for one of these.

As for the testimonials, four out of five of these gentlemen are still active, happy Efty users but some of them have changed their store-front as they either no longer see the benefit of showing their entire inventory on a marketplace or because they expanded their business and started offering additional services such as brokerage and therefore had a need for a more content-rich website. I understand that it could be confusing or give the wrong signals if those links lead to a non-Efty-powered site so I'll see if we can give that an update. Thanks for the heads up!

Stay tuned for a big update soon.

Thanks for the response, I look forward to seeing what comes. It will be a while before I have a portfolio with sufficient depth of quality to open up a storefront anyway.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Thanks for the response, I look forward to seeing what comes. It will be a while before I have a portfolio with sufficient depth of quality to open up a storefront anyway.

The majority of our sellers use our solution to host commission-free, for-sale landing pages. No need for a storefront for that. We've been adding new landing page themes consistently for the last few years so there are many different templates to choose from. Feel free to sign up for another, free trial account so you can kick the tires, and don't hesitate to email us at [email protected] if you need any help while getting started.

 

[Samer]

Love or hate them, @Doron Vermaat one most active owners, stands behind his product.

I didnt need this thread to reaffirm that;

Thanks for being there for your product, Doron.

Samer

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Love or hate them, @Doron Vermaat one most active owners, stands behind his product.

I didnt need this thread to reaffirm that;

Thanks for being there for your product, Doron.

Samer

Thank you for the kind words, Samer.

 

[Mlebo]

Thank you NameAuction for opening this thread and Doron and everyone even for your information.

There could be a simple solution to NameAuction's comments on Payment PlansMy question relates to the possibility of solving the payment issue with this service from Escrow.com domain-name-holding. There are fees; however, it seems like this would be fairly easy to implement. Mention payment plans are available on landing pages.

https://www.escrow.com/domain-name-holding

I

 

[Mlebo]

Lacks basic key features to maintain trust with buyer + payment processor once a domain name has sold (E.g., there are no automated emails for sold domains, no 302 redirect of sold domain to homepage, no marking of a sold domain as "sold" to prevent a double-buy which could result in a refund request, etc.)

If this is the case, How am I the seller notified when someone clicks buy it now on my Efty marketplace or landing page? I was under the impression that I would get an email if a domain sells. Is that correct?