Why is GoDaddy not merging with Afternic?

[Windoms]

Afternic's platform is old.
-There's a lot of odd things. Like the random review you get sometimes when adding domains to your account (quite strange).
-Getting an answer from support takes time.
-The ''All Domains'' page can't remember to show 50 domains per page.. its constantly resetting to 10. lol.
-Anyone can add any domain to his account.. I often have to ask afternic support to remove a domain from the marketplace so that I can add it to my account. They simply do it. I mean, I could have any domain removed. For no reason. Even yours.
+ everything that can be found when you type afternic on namepros.

Obviously Afternic is not top priority for Godaddy.

Maybe you all know something I don't. I'm thinking Godaddy wants to kill Afternic. Or they're working on some new feature on Godaddy.com that will make Afternic obsolete. They've acquired Afternic, they've got all the knowledge, having two different platforms is quite odd when they could have everything in one place. Or maybe they simply acquired a company then forgot about it because of large company management issues.

What is going on with Afternic?

 

[creataweb]

I don't like the ever-changing nightmare that is known as GD's interface. It's clunky and a PITA to use. Takes me much longer to do simple tasks on there than on other registrars I use.

Now going over to the topic of Afternic, it's very slow and that includes payout times and responses. I've sent emails all last week and still haven't received 1 reply. You have people there keeping names they don't own listed constantly. You have people leaving names that are not even registered anymore (I found at least 6 yesterday alone during a search for names.)

As far as pricing is concerned I can save money without joining a club on up to hundreds of domains at another registrar. I would need to own around 500 names just to break even on pricing with GDDC so why bother when the interface sucks. I've used GD for over 15 years now and it's just gotten worse over time. Pretty atrocious when you consider how much bankroll they have.

 

[CJ6]

It wouldnt be fair.
Why are you guys voting ''ease of use''?
Also Godaddy discount club .com renewal is 8.29$. Whos got cheaper?

You know, it's your poll, but you don't like the answers that you are getting and questioning why people are choosing them? That's not right.

All of the above is fair and that's my answer. I am not a member of the club because of the other 3 options. Customer support sucks. (Joe is a great exception, though.) Trustworthiness: I have had a domain taken back from godaddy because they said someone registered before me. The exact time of creation was the time I regged it and the owner info never updated with a name. They took it back a day or two after I had it in my account. So, I dont trust them. Also, their interface absolutely sucks, so Ease of Use is absolutely a reason. So All of the Above is my choice.

Edit: If you or others don't like my response, I refer you to my Signature. That's why I have it.

 

[namemarket]

imo, for larger scale domain owners there's really little in comparison between how excellent Uniregistry is vs Godaddy which is somewhat cumbersome, confusing and difficult to use, has poor bulk operations, and most columns cannot be arranged in a custom or user specified order (only a relative few can be rearranged), which can be real annoying. Another serious GD negative is it's real unclear or obvious to see which extensions are taken but very easy on Uni, sometimes I think GD may not what you to know that info as it's far from obvious.

The Uniregistry platform is so much superior to GD overall t's hard to put it in words but for the average person with only a few domains GD is good. On the plus side, GDs 24x7 support is usually excellent for everyone and their support people are well trained, professional and friendly. With that big plus I would recommend GD for a new or small domainer or average end-users. For large domainers Uniregistry is light-years ahead, especially of you take into consideration the usually very good DNS brokers, with GD extremely lacking in that regard.

 

[Kate]

Afternic's platform is old.

Godaddy's platform must be as old too.
I am talking about the back-end, not the front-end.
The bugs that you describe at Afternic are more or less the same as GD so there is no benefit to merging two platfoms that are equally old and deficient.

Speaking from the point of view of a programmer, an old system means there is a lot of technical baggage in the form of customization and arcane bugs.
Very probably, the people who set up the systems left the company a long time ago, and they have been replaced multiple times. So you end up with a big ball of mud.
Remember that a program almost never gets rewritten from scratch, we simply keep adding features and layers, resulting in bloated code and increasing complexity.
So it's technically challenging to do a huge migration right, without causing damage.

Even large banks have had lots of problems with mergers (or splits). Example: the TSB split from Lloyds has been a huge mess and a PR nightmare.
So the rule of the game is: you don't fix what ain't broken. And if it's broken, you don't touch it cause you could break it even more.

 

[anantj]

Even though you asked a question, you've pretty much rejected all answers or opinions that others have issued and are defending GD/Afternic vigorously. It's great that you love Afternic and GD so much but what exactly is your point now if you're not even willing to accept the opinions and answers of others? This is best illustrated by your latest comment. Seriously, if you're not willing to accept that other can and are critical of GD and it's platforms, then why bother with this sham poll and thread?

I think @CJ6's sig says it best (Reproducing here for context):

What I say are my thoughts. Deal with it. I'm not a politician and don't change on your every whimper. Quit acting like a stereotypical millennial.

 

[golan]

I am just inviting everyone to tell us why others are better than GoDaddy.

That's exactly what are folks trying to tell you, however you seem not willing to listen much. Basically everything is better than GD, except 1&1 of course.

So far it seems that Uniregistry are the best.

Why? Who does use Uniregistry at all? Namesilo, Dynadot, Namebright, they all are much better. There are tons of comparison threads and polls here, why don't you start with researching those first? Instead of starting a new battle without even knowing much about the main players on the market.

 

[creataweb]

I honestly think its laziness and not wanting to spend any money fixing it all.

 

[Windoms]

Must be hard being Joe.

lol

 

[CJ6]

Where is the "All of the Above" option?

 

[carob]

What is going on with Afternic?

There is already a whole thread on this question, with some answers from Godaddy, and lists of problems:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/problems-bugs-and-fixes-at-afternic-report-problems-here.1006373/

Basically they have said they won't fix the problems or spend any money.

 

[Windoms]

There is already a whole thread on this question, with some answers from Godaddy, and lists of problems:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/problems-bugs-and-fixes-at-afternic-report-problems-here.1006373/

Basically they have said they won't fix the problems or spend any money.

Not accurate.
There is a thread from May 2017 where @Joe Styler is saying that they are working on new things on Afternic.
I jumped to the end of your 36 page thread and started reading everything that contains the word ''Joe Styler'' up to page 25. There's a lot of things thrown at him lol. Here is what he is saying on page 25. February 2018.

''Yes we will not be getting rid of Afternic we are simply trying some additional ways to help people manage their domain listings.''
''I try and let people know what is happening as soon as I know. We had some other big projects come up that are taking priority. Fixing bugs is different than adding new features and we routinely fix any bugs we see and add smaller new features. There is also ongoing work for changes that come as a result of partners on the platform and making sure that domains are still able to be sold across a network of over 100 major resellers each with their own technology and platforms. Afternic gets a lot of development work done each week.''

Then the same @Joe Styler Page 36. September 2018. 3 days ago.
It depends on various factors for how/ when people get paid. We are working on a project to pay people faster but it will not be until early next year but it should significantly improve the payout speed. We also hired more support staff last month, and added a support team in Europe to help with faster turn around time on Afternic and GoDaddy Aftermarket tickets. That was a substantial investment in time and money to help improve the service level. We have some other service level changes coming in the next months that will continue to improve the experience.

He basically said, 3 days ago, that they are working on new things. And that they added a support team in Europe to help with both Afternic AND GoDaddy aftermarket tickets.
Given that they haven't touched the domain under review issue, or the all domains page that is constantly going back to showing 10 listings per page, or that anyone can add any domain to his account. I think they are either going to kill Afternic or develop a whole new Afternic that is directly accessed through Godaddy. It wouldn't make sense to have 2 different platforms with competition lurking around.

 

[branding]

Tell me Mr @golan, you are saying Namesilo dynadot namebright are better then Godaddy?
Why is Namesilo better than GD?

Their interface looks ancient but actually works like a charm, is easy to use for bulk updates, never fails to work (for me at least), pushes are a bliss, free privacy (even before gdpr), great support... All things GoDaddy lacks.

I don't think GoDaddy is that bad, don't get me wrong, but let's face it, we're all using them just because they have a huge market share.

 

[Windoms]

That is fair @NameDeck .
@anantj @carob, who are your registrars? What do you like about them that Godaddy doesnt have?

 

[anantj]

That is fair @NameDeck .
@anantj @carob, who are your registrars? What do you like about them that Godaddy doesnt have?

Namesilo for most all reasons that @NameDeck mentioned. Epik is pretty decent too with good support but I do not like their interface! Namebright would be good too but they do not provide free privacy and chat support. DD is okay but I've had a bad experience so only use them when necessary.

Dislike GD for a host of reasons! However, I'm not going to try to convince you on this so that's just going to stay as my opinion.

 

[Joe Styler]

I posted a pretty big recap of what we have been doing the past year here https://www.namepros.com/threads/pr...afternic-report-problems-here.1006373/page-37 if anyone is interested.

 

[anantj]

For future reference, here it is.

I would like to give a recap of some of the things we have been working on this past year as I think by reading this thread some things get overlooked and it may seem as if we are not moving forward unless you take a step back and look at the big picture. We have been doing some really cool thing this year.

We have added many more registrars to the Afternic network which is resulting in more opportunities for your domains to be seen and purchased by end users around the world. We have had a pretty significant increase in registrar partners focused in Asia. That has been exciting because there is renewed demand there in "non-chip" domains as Chinese investors who purchased chip domains were exposed to Western Premium names as well. We also expanded the number of partners non fast transfer domains are listed for sale.

We have also expanded significantly in Europe over the past year in terms of partners as well as local presence and language support. This enables us to sell more of your domains to end users in Europe with local sales representatives calling and emailing the buyers in their own language and time zone.

We also added a local support team which has helped reduce response times for support inquiries and helped to smooth out the sales process.

We also worked on expanding the partnerships with registrars to bring in more expired domain name inventory from third parties. This gives you a better chance to acquire good investment domains in one place and then easily list them for sale on Afternic's expanded network to get the names maximum exposure for sales.

We released a new beta view for managing domains in the domain control center that is more bulk focused and also allows direct integration into Afternic from within your GoDaddy domain view. You can list and edit domains for sale within GoDaddy’s domain management screen.

The new payment system we are releasing has taken a lot of development resources, but this is enabling us to make more exciting changes in the future. We pay a lot of people money daily and there were various ways to do that, think affiliates, resellers, parking at three different parking companies we run, domain sales via GoDaddy and Afternic, etc. What we are doing is getting all the various payment channels piped into one system that goes through a third party which is enabled to pay more ways than we can easily do. International payments via local banks in local currency for instance.

This is a pretty big undertaking to redo the various payment platforms and tie them into one place but in the end the goal is to more easily pay you for all your various payments in one place and to do it faster than we have previously been able to do. This is the ultimate goal. There are some issues that are popping up short term as we move towards a better/faster payment system, but this will ultimately allow us to speed up payments down the road.

Paying through a third party will allow our developers to have more time freed up to focus on other important projects in the future which will help us more rapidly address things that will further improve the platform.

We are working on continuing to improve the support received. We have hired additional people and are restructuring the teams internally to make sure they are able to better leverage the various strengths we have. This has been underway for a few months and will continue into the next year as we continue to hire and re-align various teams to better respond to our customers.

Most recently we hired and trained a new support team for Europe that works with the current Aftermarket teams to help strengthen the overall support experience. We have seen some exciting results in the past month as the average response time has decreased significantly and the hours advanced Aftermarket support is available to the general support has expanded.

As far as ownership verification and fast transfer etc. We have had to make some changes due to GDPR (European law which impacted certain WHOIS information). We have released changes to the way GoDaddy auctions are listed and verified, based on txt records now instead of WHOIS. This has led to greater efficiency and better real time verification of listings, especially when ownership recently changed for a domain.

We are planning on expanding this to Afternic listings in the future. This should help clear up a common complaint which is, newly acquired domains being listed by the previous owner on Afternic require a contact with support to clear up. This should not happen once this release is completed.

We also released in Beta an appraisal tool which has been helpful for various aspects of domain investing. One of the most significant impacts has been getting end users to see the value of a domain as more than a registration fee.

We have made significant investments in Afternic and GoDaddy's Aftermarket throughout the past year and the net result has been more sales for our customers and better opportunities to purchase domain names via the expiry auction. We have seen increased Aftermarket purchases as buyers are able to more easily explain why a domain is valuable to their partners, boss, or board when deciding to buy a premium domain.

I know we have a lot of other work to do but I wanted to share some of the recent projects we have been working on to let you know we have been investing in the Aftermarket platform as a whole and that there have been good results overall. Ultimately, we are working to reduce friction points for buyers and sellers and we understand from a seller standpoint there are some things that still need to be worked on, better service, faster smoother payments, and bulk tools. We are working towards those things in addition to expanding sales opportunities for sellers and inventory opportunities for buyers.

You should have quoted Joe's post here instead of copying and pasting under your own handle!

 

[Windoms]

Didnt know we could quote from other threads. There

I would like to give a recap of some of the things we have been working on this past year as I think by reading this thread some things get overlooked and it may seem as if we are not moving forward unless you take a step back and look at the big picture. We have been doing some really cool thing this year.

We have added many more registrars to the Afternic network which is resulting in more opportunities for your domains to be seen and purchased by end users around the world. We have had a pretty significant increase in registrar partners focused in Asia. That has been exciting because there is renewed demand there in "non-chip" domains as Chinese investors who purchased chip domains were exposed to Western Premium names as well. We also expanded the number of partners non fast transfer domains are listed for sale.

We have also expanded significantly in Europe over the past year in terms of partners as well as local presence and language support. This enables us to sell more of your domains to end users in Europe with local sales representatives calling and emailing the buyers in their own language and time zone.

We also added a local support team which has helped reduce response times for support inquiries and helped to smooth out the sales process.

We also worked on expanding the partnerships with registrars to bring in more expired domain name inventory from third parties. This gives you a better chance to acquire good investment domains in one place and then easily list them for sale on Afternic's expanded network to get the names maximum exposure for sales.

We released a new beta view for managing domains in the domain control center that is more bulk focused and also allows direct integration into Afternic from within your GoDaddy domain view. You can list and edit domains for sale within GoDaddy’s domain management screen.

The new payment system we are releasing has taken a lot of development resources, but this is enabling us to make more exciting changes in the future. We pay a lot of people money daily and there were various ways to do that, think affiliates, resellers, parking at three different parking companies we run, domain sales via GoDaddy and Afternic, etc. What we are doing is getting all the various payment channels piped into one system that goes through a third party which is enabled to pay more ways than we can easily do. International payments via local banks in local currency for instance.

This is a pretty big undertaking to redo the various payment platforms and tie them into one place but in the end the goal is to more easily pay you for all your various payments in one place and to do it faster than we have previously been able to do. This is the ultimate goal. There are some issues that are popping up short term as we move towards a better/faster payment system, but this will ultimately allow us to speed up payments down the road.

Paying through a third party will allow our developers to have more time freed up to focus on other important projects in the future which will help us more rapidly address things that will further improve the platform.

We are working on continuing to improve the support received. We have hired additional people and are restructuring the teams internally to make sure they are able to better leverage the various strengths we have. This has been underway for a few months and will continue into the next year as we continue to hire and re-align various teams to better respond to our customers.

Most recently we hired and trained a new support team for Europe that works with the current Aftermarket teams to help strengthen the overall support experience. We have seen some exciting results in the past month as the average response time has decreased significantly and the hours advanced Aftermarket support is available to the general support has expanded.

As far as ownership verification and fast transfer etc. We have had to make some changes due to GDPR (European law which impacted certain WHOIS information). We have released changes to the way GoDaddy auctions are listed and verified, based on txt records now instead of WHOIS. This has led to greater efficiency and better real time verification of listings, especially when ownership recently changed for a domain.

We are planning on expanding this to Afternic listings in the future. This should help clear up a common complaint which is, newly acquired domains being listed by the previous owner on Afternic require a contact with support to clear up. This should not happen once this release is completed.

We also released in Beta an appraisal tool which has been helpful for various aspects of domain investing. One of the most significant impacts has been getting end users to see the value of a domain as more than a registration fee.

We have made significant investments in Afternic and GoDaddy's Aftermarket throughout the past year and the net result has been more sales for our customers and better opportunities to purchase domain names via the expiry auction. We have seen increased Aftermarket purchases as buyers are able to more easily explain why a domain is valuable to their partners, boss, or board when deciding to buy a premium domain.

I know we have a lot of other work to do but I wanted to share some of the recent projects we have been working on to let you know we have been investing in the Aftermarket platform as a whole and that there have been good results overall. Ultimately, we are working to reduce friction points for buyers and sellers and we understand from a seller standpoint there are some things that still need to be worked on, better service, faster smoother payments, and bulk tools. We are working towards those things in addition to expanding sales opportunities for sellers and inventory opportunities for buyers.

 

[Soofi]

@Joe Styler might have an answer for you!

 

[RevolutionaryDomains]

.

 

[Windoms]

Where is the "All of the Above" option?

It wouldnt be fair.
Why are you guys voting ''ease of use''?
Also Godaddy discount club .com renewal is 8.29$. Whos got cheaper?

 

[Windoms]

I was just trying to gain insight.
I like godaddys interface more than dynadot.
Namecheap is nice. But i prefer godaddy.
Uniregistry's interface is nice but I personally think there's a lot going on once you go into domain management mode.
Im asking so that we can share our opinions and gain insight. Because of godaddys reputation with some domainers, the all of the above poll answer wouldn't be very constructive.

I personally think customer support is excellent. Especially with the ability to use live chat and have all your issues resolved instantly. You can ask them to add a domain you've just deleted and they'll do it instantly. You can refund anything over chat. Ask anything. Yesterday I couldnt access the view personal info on any of my domains (whois privacy). I asked them whats up and the lady told me: first try in private window (it worked), then clear your cookies (it worked). Instantly.

As for pricing, I think renewal prices are good for all extensions if you are part of discount club. I haven't compared with others so I want to know who is beating the 8.29$ .com renewal.
You can have multiple accounts. For example one account for those ''lean'' domains that you renew, privacy everything. Another account for those questionable domains you don't renew, no privacy. Then monitor sales between the two.

Godaddy is established and pushing a domain to other accounts is seamless. Better for endusers.

I could see why some would go elsewhere because of free whois privacy. But what else?

 

[Windoms]

The one thing Uniregistry excels at is searching for available extensions. I still use them for that feature. I've only registered one domain over there.
The interface is very nice. But I think Godaddy is more navigation/reading friendly.
Haven't tried Uniregistry on mobile.

 

[Windoms]

I have no technical knowledge so thank you @Kate. What you said just makes my point stronger.
They left all these errors behind which is telling me they are working on something brand new (as @Joe Styler has said. But redesigning everything from the ground up and not merging (strengthening) Godaddy is quite odd, especially with competitors lurking around.
@creataweb I agree other platforms are smoother.
@namemarket you've made very strong points about Uniregistry. Exactly the opposite of what I thought ''I personally think there's a lot going on once you go into domain management mode.'' Thank you.

This is exactly what I've been wondering about. What advantage does your registrar have over GoDaddy?
All I remember from other threads is Godaddy woof woof, domainer hate Godaddy woof woof. namesilo 1$ woof woof. free whois woof woof. lol.
Thank you for this constructive information.
So far I have 90% of my domains at Godaddy, and I don't have many so I can still switch to another registrar.
Even if Dynadot has both sedomls and afternic premium, I prefer Namecheap and Uniregistry.
And now with what @namemarket has said about Uniregistry's large portfolio management tools and brokers, I prefer Uniregistry over Namecheap. Unless Namecheap has something I'm unaware of.
Please share your registrar's advantage over Godaddy, so that others can find what they need.
@namemarket, what's up with those DNS brokers?

 

[carob]

Basically they have said they won't fix the problems or spend any money.

This is where they say that, aside from the fact anyone can see they don't fix even the simplest reported problems - this is Godaddy's Paul Nicks being quoted in the Afternic thread at post #278

https://www.namepros.com/threads/pr...rt-problems-here.1006373/page-12#post-6149423

So, instead of a heavy marketing expense to try and prop up a marketplace as the best search option, we made a bet that it would be easier for us -and more profitable for our customers- if we focused all of our energy on selling domains via our reseller network. So instead of investing money and resources into trying to get small businesses to visit Afternic, we are investing in expanding our reach at registrars, where customers already are.