Thoughts on NameBright?

[agentscarn]

Saw a nice post on DNW about namebright and now the bright orange banners here on namepros. Does anyone have any firsthand experience with them?

 

[Jasonn]

another great way for reberry to get expired domains

 

[Name Trader]

GoDaddy does a good job auctioning off their expired domain names. As you say, you have about 1M names. I presume you don't renew all of them. I know this because I have captured one or two of them in the past. I think you would have a great opportunity (because generally your domains are of good quality) to auction off all your expired domains from all your 51 registers including all the expired domains of your customers in a "GoDaddy like" auction. This would give you some return on your drops, and us some possibility to capture some domains which you no longer want, at maybe cheaper prices than at SnapNames/Namejet (assuming you adopt a GoDaddy type level of pricing, letting the market decide the final price).

 

[Haris]

NameBright is one of the best registrars.. For me, NameSilo & NameBright are on top of the list of the best registrars. NameSilo has better support, NameBright has better pricing. I prefer better pricing and might transfer all my domains there someday.

 

[Rebies]

equity78 - I understood that. I was just addressing the points you brought up. I did not take any offense to your postings.

I want people to be fully aware of who we are, what we do, and know that I am not shying away from criticism.

Also, don't get caught up in my mentioning loosing money part of it. If it was some small time registrar that might be scary. But we are in the top 15 "registrar families" in the world when you consider the 51 sister registrars we have access to and over 1,000,000 domains under management. That makes us big - one of the top 15 registrars. So losing a little money to gain customers is just a marketing expense for us. We have carefully planned that out and know what we are doing on that end...

---------- Post added at 12:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 AM ----------

Alien51 – It sounds like your concerns are if you do availability checks and whois checks and our company sees those?

My answer: not my company – not in a million years. That is shady and it is something we have zero interest in doing. As a registrar I want to work 100% for the customer.

You also pointed out sour sales deals… We have tools that will keep you happy and safe. “Linked Accounts” Simply find a buyer, sign a contract with that buyer and that contract says he will pay you in 6 months. You then give him linked account access to one domain (the domain you are selling) and give him all permissions except to unlock, transfer out, delete or push the domain. So the domain remains "secure". During this contract you have 100% full control over the domain, but the buyer does not have "full" control". If the sale does not complete, you remove his linked account access and the domain is yours again. If pending the legal contract goes full through - you can now transfer the domain to him. Best part is you don't have to deal with credit cards and 60 to 90 day chargebacks!

These are just some NameBright can be better for domainers. And a lot more features coming that we could not fit into the initial launch.

 

[Expron]

I wish NameBright's API would allow domainers to "Play The Drop" and catch domains into our accounts at registration fee. Perhaps the system can mark the domains TurnCommerce chases for HugeDomains (Domain Warehouse) as "Unavailable" and allow domainers to chase & catch / backorder domains the domains your company don't desire on our own via your API system.

Then it would make sense for me to develop a drop catch software tool to hook into your API system. It would make a great software title for DropKing.com and benefit NameBright as well. Just some food for thought, because at this point - I feel like the TurnCommerce registrars are not in the domainer's best interest. I am not trying to be negative here, just recommending a feature that can be built into the API design. I think many NamePros forum members would appreciate an API drop catching or backorder feature.

 

[Rebies]

Update.. Our November promotion is live! All new .COM domain registrations during November will be $4.99 per domain for the first year. Pre-funded accounts will get slightly cheaper rates of $4.58 per domain per year! Renewals will be at the regular rate of $8.03 per year, transfers are the same price of $8.03 per year.

 

[Rebies]

wwwweb - renewals are $8.03 for .com domains. Right now our support is 8 to 5 Monday through Friday though a few of us are stepping in off hours to make sure everything is smooth. We are currently in talks with a few people in Europe to handle night support and bring on weekend support as well. As for extended grace period - we offer that for sure. Even more, if we buy a domain you had with us after you let it expire, as long as we still own the domain, we will get it back to you up to 365 days after it expired. For the $8.03 renewal price. This is our commitment to our customers. There has been speculation we are launching a registrar to get expired domains from our customers, and that is so far from the truth. As to dropcatching - read earlier in this thread. It will happen, I can't give out the exact details yet. But I can say we won't be competing with our customers. We are working on solutions for this right now. Implementation takes a little time though.

 

[Name Trader]

Another couple of good suggestions which no other registrar has

1. Look up to see if the domain is banned by Google
2. Look up to see if the domain is trademarked in both US or Europe

 

[alien51]

stub - if you have a domain with NameBright, you let it expire, our company takes over management, and at any point in that year you decide you want the domain back, you pay $8.03 and take it over until the domain expires again. There are a few buts about this... We might not decide to buy / take over ownership of the domain. So if that happens, nothing we can do. Also, we might buy the domain and later drop it or sell it. If that happens, there is nothing we can do. And it all has to do with our expiration process, if another company takes over the domain there is nothing we can do about it. But hopefully this gives domain owners an extra level of confidence if they don't want to make the investment now, but in a year wish they did not drop the domain.

So what that basically means, is that WE who are waiting for those EXPIRED domains to drop, will NEVER get it (as in ZERO chance). You practically have 1 YEAR as a form of Domain Tasting, to check out whether the expired domain you took control has traffic, or has demand (via inquiry).

Imagine if 90% of all domainers are in Namebright, you would catch ALL of their drops before anyone else, and you have the ability to TASTE the domain for 1 FULL YEAR.

There would be TOTAL GLUT in the drop pool competition. Everything that will be spit out from that fine mesh AFTER 1 YEAR would appear to be domains totally devoid of any measurable value.

That would be like fishing the ocean using a net that has holes only 3 millimeters wide catching everything while scrapping the ocean floor. You then have 1 year to see which fish has demand, before you throw them back into the sea after you have proven to yourself that there's no demand for that fish.

 

[alien51]

Anyway, this isn't the issue I am now having with the company. This is related to them taking domains that I am searching for. I did a bulk search for 6 domain names this morning, all set to expire today. My retention rate on expiring domains that I am searching is something like 60%-100%, meaning when I search for a group of .com domain names set to expire I typically acquire over half of them if not close to all of them.

4 OUT OF 6 OF THESE DOMAINS THAT I SEARCHED ARE NOW REGISTERED BY HUGEDOMAINS.COM AS OF TODAY!

I already asked that in the very first page of this thread. And they already said they don't do that kinda thing. There is no way to prove it (or maybe you found one, i dunno about that), so you just have to take their word for it.

However, i am not sure if you really can beat Andrew's namedrop catching software. This could really be a coincidence.

What i don't like, is they holding on to drop domains for a year, in the premise that you could get it back in case you changed your mind. I don't remember ICANN rules to be like that on dropping domains. If a domain has dropped, you have to let it go through the normal drop process just like everybody else and make it available to others within the standard designated time frame. Holding it out for a year is way too long and opportunistic. That would be like Namebright scrapping the entire sea floor and leaving no fishes behind. Not even the small ones.

Imagine if all the quality drops are coming off domainers, and domainers are regged with Namebright, then ALL quality drops will land with Andrew with no software dropcatching competition anymore. Like getting handed to him in a silver platter with little to no effort at all. The drop pool will be dead.

 

[alien51]

@Garandy you joined NamePros just to make this post? Do you work for NameBright? And I am totally aware of what is going on around me. I've been in domaining for quite some time now. I don't trust NameBright or HugeDomains. And like I said, I search names almost on a daily basis. That nearly all the domains I wanted were taken by the same registrar that I was searching on says too much to me.

Never had a single issue like this at GoDaddy for the many years that I have been registering there. And regardless of what is actually happening and if I am totally wrong, what NameBright (or HugeDomains) is doing is very controversial to say the least. They offer a product to register names but they themselves also register names. This act is frowned upon in so many industries and actually illegal in a lot of them.

Hey NameBright, you think your domainer customers (your prime target) are fond of you competing with them?? What customer of yours if they knew your actions in its entirety would be happy with your actions??

So here's what I gather, they have multiple crap registrars that catch all the great expiring names and then have a registrar for us chumps who register the left over crap, which only puts the domains in their hands anyway but leaves us with the costs of registration. They then have sweet rules that work in their favor (like 1 year holding periods for expiring names).

Bro, seriously, that front-running conspiracy you brought up is not a smoking gun. I symphatize with you, if that is true -- if -- ..... However, their robot is really good. I bulked searched somewhere else and i can't believe they snatched what i had in mind. Putting a Terminator against living beings like us, is not fair, but i can live with that. I can't accuse them of front-running, though.

But given, as it may, that i get beaten by a software. The final straw is when Andrew wants to keep expired domains for 1 YEAR for the excuse that maybe.... just maybe.... the guy who dropped it "might" want it back. C'mon, man, for 1 YEAR ???

 

[Rebies]

Thank you both for the great reviews! We love hearing this sort of feedback.

i love your platform

category settings is a fantastic tool.

you beat the competitors by far with your software

the domain manager seems to work great and easy

I can tell already with the NameBright system, it's logically setup and just simply works.

As you indicated, we have put tremendous effort into workflow to make managing domains way easier. We are also proud of the speed of the registrar as well and that you can get to business fast, instead of being bloated down with slow software.

Should you come across ideas on how we can improve, don't be fearful of the black link on the left of the site that says "feedback". If you are doing something over and over repetitively, let us know so we can make further improvements to our workflow to make NameBright even easier to use!

 

[Rebies]

hippoking and stub... I appreciate the input. We are having discussions about privacy protection costs after year 1 and trying to find a way to bring the cost down for bigger portfolios. While I can not promise anything right now, it is at least being discussed on our end and we have 3 or 4 ways of possibly tackling this.

So you know... Whois privacy is one of our biggest costs. Every time a domain has privacy protection turned on, we have to field all calls that come to us, and amazingly it is a lot. While I don't have statistics on this, I feel like every domain that is privacy protected results in 1/2 a call a year to us. And that cost adds up on our end. People calling us for all reasons to discuss a domain that customers own. And then we have to explain they have to send an email to [email protected] to contact the owner. A lot of people want to call the owner, but we cannot provide that information to them. Each one of these calls takes us 5 to 10 minutes, and we get a surprisingly large amount of call volume because of private registrations.

Here is something for you to consider... You can always make your own whois privacy as well. Just buy one domain that is something like TheBestPrivacyProtection, use a local PO box (probably less than $100 a year) and you are setup to do your own privacy protection. You can even use a wildcard email address with us such as *@TheBestPrivacyProtection, and with NameBright we allow {domain} variables in our contact information - so with little effort you can replicate what we do with NameBrightPrivacy.com. To be honest, you don't really need your registrar to do it for you. The only downfall if you did something like this... If someone was really motivated they can probably do enough research and figure out most of the domains you own, given you are going to be the only person using that privacy protection service. But 99% of people will just assume it is just another privacy protection service and would never do the research. Food for thought anyway. (Edit: to clarify.. in the contact information you would set up the owner's email address as {domain}@TheBestPrivacyProtection.ext. Our system will change this to [email protected] in all whois output)

 

[Joseph Green]

I'm interested in acquiring a domain that is in pending delete stage at NameBright. Where do I go to backorder or otherwise grab a NameBright drop? Thanks.

TurnCommerce, Inc is the parent company of NameBright and DropCatch.

DropCatch.com is probably your best bet, but I'm not sure if they support "pre-release" backorders yet.

Either way, if the domain name is already in the pending delete stage, they can't offer it in a "pre-release" fashion. They can only try to secure it like all the other dropcatching companies at that point.

 

[Haris]

How long do these name squatter cons hang on to a domain name for? I'm not paying their ridiculous prices I was just curious about a time frame or if they just hold them indefinitely. I'll make other arrangements if that's the case.

we hold them indefinitely because we want the caaaaash.. but if for some reason one guy forgets to pay renewal fees, other guys catch it before it expires so people like you have no choice but to pay us the caaaash.

 

[nicedomains]

Namebright are a joke

It's a wonder why ANYONE would want to leave more than a few domains with them.
They're not ready for prime time - and never will be.


1/ Can only have, at most, ONE set of WHOIS details applicable for ALL domains

So if you require different WHOIS details for various domains - can't do it

Once you amend WHOIS details in Contol Panel, it changes EVERY domain you hold with them

For Transfers in, if incoming domain has a specific WHOIS, when it transfers in to NBright, that WHOIS will change to the WHOIS in your NBright control panel


2/ AUTH CODE on bulk Transfers out seem to require 2 or 3 goes to be successful

Get errors

3/ Transfer In often, it takes a few HOURS before you get the confirming email

Whereas Godaddy always seems to be almost instant


4/ Not the cheapest

Make it hard (discourage) to pay via Paypal by having to do a lump prepayment first


5/ Don't give bulk discounts for domains in Redemptions

Not that they're obliged to..

But Godaddy does it if you're an Exec Account


Fk 'em & Rabies

@Drunker were you drunk and pissed when you wrote this? Rabies? lmao

Not ready for prime time? Hahaha, apparently you don't know who runs this company.

NB platform is robust, easiest to use in the industry, very domainer friendly...never had problems transferring..transferred hundreds of domains in and out. Transfers are pretty much instant.

Free first year of privacy at NB, why do you need different whois for different names in same account? That seems a little questionable in itself.

Pretty damn cheap.. $8.03 reg/renewal/transfer $8.53 if you don't preload funds in your account. Go ahead and store all your premium .coms in a fly by night registrar that's cheaper than this. Good luck

Boohoo you let a bunch of names expire and they won't give you a discount to get them out of redemption.

 

[Haris]

Everythings with NB is ok, exeprt after a years I want to renew my domain Their system want verify my phonenumber, and when it accept my verify. Nothings happen, it still require my phone verify.
I've tried to contact them but still don't have any information.
May be I will lose my domain :-<
And never use NB again.

Email at this address

[email protected]

 

[alexdon82]

update: issue resolved by me, contacted to: [email protected] .
Hopefully it will work long term now.

 

[Name Trader]

Extremely frustrating. I'm hoping this finds resolution quickly, again unable to access the site for hours and no response from support. @Rebies @DropCatch please advise.

I don't think you are going to see much improvement. My guess is they use the same hosting for both NameBright AND DropCatch. I see similar problems on DropCatch, which are particularly irritating about the time of the drop.

What is noticeable. Is they usually have only about <100 domains in their drop catch every day. So I'd guess the problem lies in the 1000's of domains they capture for themselves every day. Slowing things down. Personally. I think they need to improve their overall speed. But I won't be holding my breath. It sucks.

 

[Rich]

Rebies, will namebright be offering backorder services as well? do you know if namebright has a pre-release agreement with any auction houses yet, for expired domains. thanks

 

[Rebies]

agentscarn - thanks for the great review! If you find any issues or anything confusing let us know! We are all about making the experience as easy as possible so domainers can be more efficient. We have all sorts of tools we did not have time to get into the initial launch but will be putting in as we get the time. And we are all about hearing suggestions for what you want to make this platform the best.

Rich - I will hint you might be onto something. But we don't want to get into exact details at this point. And no, we don't have any agreements with auction houses for expired domains.

---------- Post added at 01:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:03 PM ----------

Biggie - we are accredited. Right now it is "TurnCommerce, Inc. DBA NameBright.com", we have been meaning to move this over to just be NameBright.com. (IANA ID is 1441)

 

[SpareDomains]

another great way for reberry to get expired domains

If ya wanna get expired names on the cheap start a registrar. If ya wanna buy domains that make parking income start a parking company and anonymously buy all your customers income producing domains. :bingo:

 

[equity78]

@rebies well it is a valid point Jasonn makes and what you posted maybe true but that does not make the two things mutually exclusive. Maybe you built a great piece of software to share to act as Trojan horse that leads to getting expired names on the cheap. I am not knocking you, this is business, not a public service and no one in domaining is saving the world.

I would say do what Fabulous and Above do, the two Australian companies share their profits with the former owner, so Fabulous has a deal that their inventory goes to NameJet and the former registrant shares in the auction proceeds if someone bids.

---------- Post added at 08:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:06 PM ----------

What is the Expiring Domains Service?

The Expiring Domains Service is a service offered in partnership with Namejet - a domain name aftermarket auction company that consolidates an exclusive inventory of expired and deleted domains from top domain name registrars and makes them available for auction.

NameJet provides solutions for customers who are attempting to acquire the domain name registration rights to expiring domains or domains that have not been registered again by their current registrant.

Some quick details about the program:

This is an opt in service and only available to those domains registered at Fabulous.com
Customers must agree to the Expiring Domain Sales Agreement
You will receive 60% of the final sales price (minus the renewal fee) for all domain names sold through this service
It is a requirement for you to agree to the Domain Inventory Management Agreement, however you are not required to list any names for sale
All expiring domain names in your account will automatically be listed for sale at NameJet, except for the domain names you have marked as "Never Sell".
The minimum sale price is US$69.00
Domain names can still be renewed for the first 30 days after the expiry date however after this date it may not be possible for you to retain ownership of any expired domain names in your account if you have opted in to this service

 

[Jasonn]

Jasonn - expiring domain names is not the intention in building NameBright. We built a great piece of software that I am EXTREMELY proud of. This has been a very large project over the last few years and I want to share the tools we have access to ourselves with domainers, to help them be more successful. I believe that bringing domainers in eventually brings in more end users. Domainers sell domains, push them to the buyers and that becomes a driving force for our registrar and creates growth.

I'm sure you can understand that when people hear your name, they think expired domains since those who work the drops see your name every day. I must say I am quite impressed and envious of what you have achieved and how far you've come since i first noticed you getting a number of names in 2009 however in the process you've made it next to impossible for the average domainer to get a half decent expired domain without going though snapnames, namejet ect. and even then you beat them out sometimes. Like equity said, its all business and of course you can't be faulted for being successful. I think you can understand why people might think namebright could be used as another avenue for expired domains though since you are the king of the drops these days.