InvisionTech said:
Man, I can't believe how screwed up things are at DomainPeople.com and probably same at hostway.com.
Funny how little consideration people give to any measure of quality or service when choosing a registrar. Domain investments absolutely depend on those registrars, and yet people will choose differently for a $5 savings. Wait until the service appears to work before placing your bet.
Also note that Encirca has the most kickass DNS services you're going to find in a registrar, not just in the small world of .PRO but in general. Yes, I realize the crowd here doesn't really know much about DNS but you should, since your investment depends on it, and you may be able to profit by using it more effectively. The service is just disguised behind an amazingly bad user interface. None of these new entrants even offers DNS service, and even the requisite "Edit Nameservers" functionality seems to be broken in one edge case (I've had an open ticket to fix this most basic functionality for over a week now at one of these registrars)
Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm employed by Encirca or some kind of fanboy. Their recent behavior around expiring domain names has been disgraceful at the very least. I've seen domains with expiration dates over one week apart moved to expired status within minutes of each other. Their grace deletion policy seems to be completely arbitrary as well.
My scorecard still shows Encirca as the best choice though:
1. Services offered - top of the heap
2. Reliability of registration function (even with that antique MIVA Merchant interface) - dependable
3. Trustworthiness - low
feel free to offer dissenting opinions and contrasting experiences
Izo-Pod said:
Don't fall into the "just because it's a generic it will do well" fallacy. At one time, I owned weather.pro, wedding.pro, college.pro, wireless.pro.
<snip>
Will .pro gain traction? I do, but no more than .org or .net. So choose wisely. What I'm going after are .pro domains which clearly describes a product or service that is in demand. Again, products or service...
<snip>
So my recommendation is to limit yourself to how many domains you buy. Then build them out. There is no reason someone couldn't "break through" the advertising clutter with one of their dot pro's. Make it into a "eHarmony" type brand. Like I've said, it's the best "new" domain to come out. I do plan on following the advice here, and begin to develop CreditScores.pro and FantasySports.pro
Aren't you charging for that advice? It's golden and pure and wise, I nominate you for .PRO prophet.
I still think wedding.pro is a classic, and will someday realize the inherent value that you first saw years ago when you registered it. I remember the site you started building when you still believed. I wish I had bought it from you.
I also believe that .pro will eventually be popular, but only make it into the top ten, not really a challenger to .com. It is a perfect fit with some few terms. But it's just foolishness to register keywords with high Google SERPS if they don't match well with the TLD.
People are not choosing wisely, there is a bubble mentality at work. Crtitical thinking has never been the norm, otherwise investing would be too hard! But when I see some of the dictionary words being registered that make no sense in .PRO I have to laugh.
Finally I like to see fantasysports.pro in your capable hands. I let that one drop this year, with fantasy.pro and fantasyfootball.pro. I thought long and hard about keeping the latter, but realized I'm never going to develop it, and the big players in the industry have domains they've invested mightily in already. So how to find the new challenger that needs that domain?
Opportunities are everywhere, so if you can't visualize a plan for success with a domain, let it go and let someone else that does have the vision make it happen.
