domain My first .io domain purchase. Please appraise. - freesms.io

[Jason Miller]

I purchased my first .io domain and would like peoples opinions and estimations on what they think it's worth from their past experience and gut feeling. I actually managed to get this domain for very cheap because of a cash back deal, so no biggie if it's not worth much. In my opinion, the .io extension is suitable in this case because of the industry the domain is aimed at and what .io's are primarily being used for these days.

There are tons of websites online offering messaging services as well as tons of messenger apps, some with thousands and others with millions of users. Some of the web services have domain names with extra words and letters added, which doesn't look great. So it might be worthwhile contacting some of the owners of these domains to see if they would be interested in purchasing it.

I am new to selling domain names but from being on this forum the last couple of weeks, I know there are mixed opinions of domain appraisal services such as estibot.com but I will include the information for reference and also .com domain extension info. Domain appraisal services can be used for a ball park estimate based on stats, past sales of similar domains, keyword search volume and CPC value but at the end of the day a domain is only worth what a buyer is willing to pay. Obviously if your business is generating a good income or you estimate that it will be in the future, you would probably be prepared to pay for a nice readable, relevant and easy to remember name.

The .com version of this domain, according to estibot.com is worth $241,000, domainindex.com values it at $400,000 and when you try and add it to Sedo.com, it suggests a price of £4999 or roughly $6500. On the other hand, .io gets a valuation of $720 on estibot.com, domainindex.com doesn't value .io extensions at all and when you try add it to Sedo.com, it suggests a price of £1999 or roughly $2600. A broad search for the domain keywords returns 5,112,500 results and a CPC of $1.95. For an exact match search it's 562,500 results and a CPC of $1.05.

Thanks in advance for any replies and valuations.

 

[Brands.International]

Hello,
it is very nice domain name. As I can see from namebio, free-sms.de sold for 162,150 USD at 2010-01-26 at Sedo, which is very nice sale. sms.io sold for 7,500 USD at 2015-03-12 at Flippa

Also .IO gets very well with technical terms as "freesms" is..so valuation will depend very much on how much effort you will invest into your sale of this domain. FreeSms.IO is not really much worse then hyphenated free-sms.de, and it is more general imo, as it can be used globally (not only for german users).

If you put it to auction at Flippa, it might fetch imo anything from low XXX to low XXXX at the moment.
If you would focus on selling it to end users (big telco companies, telco startups, etc..- and it might take several years maybe to find right one) I can imagine that you can get mid XXXX for it. Also depends much on how .IO will be doing in several years.

 

[kn65]

Nice domain, as stated the .io is a good TLD for tech domains.

 

[manoj7]

definitely very good domain name and .io extension is good.

 

[Jason Miller]

Not been on here for a while but I still own this domain name and I'm looking to either put it up for auction or find a direct buyer in the next month or so if possible.

Does anybody else have any opinions on what they feel this domain is worth? I can really see this domain being highly beneficial to SMS messaging apps as the competition is quite fierce or a big Telco company as lolwarrior stated.

I also noticed that the owner of freesms.com has an asking price of $588,000. Not quite sure if it's worth that much but still a factor to take into consideration as any individuals or companies in the SMS market could settle for the .io version as a compromise and as it's tech related, it's perfectly suited for it.

 

[evo.domains]

Hmm, I cannot agree here. I sold a bunch of .io domains on Flippa and I doubt you will reach low XXXX for it as lolwarrior stated in his post. I would say with some luck you will sell it there for XX to maybe 1XX-2XX, depending on your Flippa marketing strategy. Furthermore, the demand of SMS messaging fades more and more away with services like Whatsapp etc. I don't remember when I wrote my last SMS, must be years ago. That's my opinion.

 

[Jason Miller]

Hmm, I cannot agree here. I sold a bunch of .io domains on Flippa and I doubt you will reach low XXXX for it as lolwarrior stated in his post. I would say with some luck you will sell it there for XX to maybe 1XX-2XX, depending on your Flippa marketing strategy. Furthermore, the demand of SMS messaging fades more and more away with services like Whatsapp etc. I don't remember when I wrote my last SMS, must be years ago. That's my opinion.

I see what your saying but I have to disagree with you somewhat. From the research I've done, the number of people using SMS is HUGE and still growing. There are trillions of text messages sent every single year, hundreds of billions per month or tens of billions per day, even with apps such as WhatsApp existing. Every single mobile phone has the capability to send and receive text messages. All age groups, genders and races also use SMS to communicate with their friends and family. It's still one of the most used features of a phone.

Furthermore the term "free SMS" receives over 500,000 searches per month on Google. That tells me there is still a huge demand free SMS services. If you do a Google search for free SMS or search the Google play store you will see the majority of these apps use SMS in the title and descriptions. One of the most popular apps is called Go Pro SMS that has over 100 million downloads on the Google Play store alone. This tells me people are now associating SMS with apps as well which is why I pointed out that it could be valuable to the owners as the competition is quite fierce and owning a generic keyword domain like this with the io extension could be of value to them.

You could be correct though. It seems many .io domains sell for quite low on sites such as Flippa. My hope was to reach out to companies and directly market why this keyword domain is valuable to them rather than put it up on auction and just hope people see it.

 

[Kate]

Develop it, and then you sell a developed website. Not just a domain name that is rather average in its own right.

 

[Jason Miller]

Develop it, and then you sell a developed website. Not just a domain name that is rather average in its own right.

Would you say freesms.com is an average domain name?

 

[Kate]

Great in .com, average in .io.
And to be honest asking $588,000 for the .com is overpriced imo.

 

[Jason Miller]

Great in .com, average in .io.
And to be honest asking $588,000 for the .com is overpriced imo.

Yeah $588,000 seems too high to me as well.

A few similar domain sales:

free-sms.de sold for $162,150
gratissms.se sold for $32,332
gratis-sms.de sold for $3,007
frei-sms.de sold for $2,700
freesms.nl sold for $1,428

sms.io sold for $7,500 to a SMS marketing company who seems to have just redirected it to their own website.

What do you feel the domain name is worth?

 

[evo.domains]

I see what your saying but I have to disagree with you somewhat. From the research I've done, the number of people using SMS is HUGE and still growing. There are trillions of text messages sent every single year, hundreds of billions per month or tens of billions per day, even with apps such as WhatsApp existing. Every single mobile phone has the capability to send and receive text messages. All age groups, genders and races also use SMS to communicate with their friends and family. It's still one of the most used features of a phone.

Furthermore the term "free SMS" receives over 500,000 searches per month on Google. That tells me there is still a huge demand free SMS services. If you do a Google search for free SMS or search the Google play store you will see the majority of these apps use SMS in the title and descriptions. One of the most popular apps is called Go Pro SMS that has over 100 million downloads on the Google Play store alone. This tells me people are now associating SMS with apps as well which is why I pointed out that it could be valuable to the owners as the competition is quite fierce and owning a generic keyword domain like this with the io extension could be of value to them.

You could be correct though. It seems many .io domains sell for quite low on sites such as Flippa. My hope was to reach out to companies and directly market why this keyword domain is valuable to them rather than put it up on auction and just hope people see it.

Yes, I wouldn't recommend to sell it on Flippa. Only if you spend some decent amount of cash in marketing the auction on their platform. Sorry mate, I am still not a big fan of this domain. In my opinion .io domains are great for tech startups using short brand names/one killer keyword names, but I don't think they are really good for what people do with .coms. I mean using it with two or more combined keywords even if some people search for it. I am sure you can probably register tons of two word .io domains. smsgratis.io for instance. Has also a good search volume, but in my opinion there's a good reason for it why it is still not registered in 2017. Don't wanna destroy your illusions. Maybe I am wrong. If you sell it let us now what you got for it.

 

[Kate]

How much this domain is worth ? I honestly don't know. I am even surprised at the prices fetched by .io sometimes.

I have a naive question: is there still a market for free SMS sites ?
I was using a free service from MTN (ZA) back in 1996, but nowadays everybody has got a mobile phone and some sort of cell phone plan. The only reason I would use a free SMS site is:

1. to reach international numbers (even though it's cheap nowadays)
2. to send anonymously, without exposing my own number, or for pranks

If the service is free, then I suppose it has to be supported by advertising.

For sending bulk SMS, there are paid services like Bulksms, or you could set up your own corporate SMS gateway (something we did for a client). It's not something you get for free usually.
So I think the need may be occasional, plus there are many free sms sites and I even wonder if they get much in terms of 'customer' loyalty. I have seen them come and go.
I know it's more questions than answers.

 

[Jason Miller]

Yes, I wouldn't recommend to sell it on Flippa. Only if you spend some decent amount of cash in marketing the auction on their platform. Sorry mate, I am still not a big fan of this domain. In my opinion .io domains are great for tech startups using short brand names/one killer keyword names, but I don't think they are really good for what people do with .coms. I mean using it with two or more combined keywords even if some people search for it. I am sure you can probably register tons of two word .io domains. smsgratis.io for instance. Has also a good search volume, but in my opinion there's a good reason for it why it is still not registered in 2017. Don't wanna destroy your illusions. Maybe I am wrong. If you sell it let us now what you got for it.

Appreciate the feedback dude. I'll definitely let you know how the sale goes if it sells.

 

[Isac]

In my opinion you will fetch low XXX to low XXXX max for this domain . I agree with ms. @Kate, you should develop it and then sell it.

 

[Jason Miller]

How much this domain is worth ? I honestly don't know. I am even surprised at the prices fetched by .io sometimes.

I have a naive question: is there still a market for free SMS sites ?
I was using a free service from MTN (ZA) back in 1996, but nowadays everybody has got a mobile phone and some sort of cell phone plan. The only reason I would use a free SMS site is:

1. to reach international numbers (even though it's cheap nowadays)
2. to send anonymously, without exposing my own number, or for pranks

If the service is free, then I suppose it has to be supported by advertising.

For sending bulk SMS, there are paid services like Bulksms, or you could set up your own corporate SMS gateway (something we did for a client). It's not something you get for free usually.
So I think the need may be occasional, plus there are many free sms sites and I even wonder if they get much in terms of 'customer' loyalty. I have seen them come and go.
I know it's more questions than answers.

Appreciate the feedback Kate. I'd imagine there is still a good market out there for free SMS services.

The question in my mind is why are so many people still searching for free SMS services in 2017 if no one uses them anymore?

 

[Jason Miller]

In my opinion you will fetch low XXX to low XXXX max for this domain . I agree with ms. @Kate, you should develop it and then sell it.

I was thinking it would fetch a price somewhere in that region. I'll take onboard the comments about developing the site though.