Buying on SnapNames is better, but still not great

I experience fewer headaches at SnapNames than I used to, but it’s still not as easy as winning expired domains at other services.

Yellow and black color with line striped label banner with word expired

I’ve bought a lot more domain names on SnapNames over the past six months after taking a long break. I took a break because of the “pain and suffering” you experience when you win a domain name there.

When you win a domain on GoDaddy Auctions, it goes into your GoDaddy account. When you win at DropCatch, it goes into your NameBright account. But when you win a SnapNames, who knows where it will end up?

For a while, even when the domain would be placed into a Network Solutions account, SnapNames created new Network Solutions accounts for me. It seemed to randomly insert the wins into one of four or five accounts. So, I had all these accounts and would have to log into them to find the domains.

I’m not sure what changed, but now all of my Network Solutions wins go into a single account, which saves me a lot of headaches.

To be sure, there are still many issues. I was reminded of this when I won a domain name at SnapNames this week that was at Crazy Domains. Crazy Domains is part of the same company as SnapNames, but I’ve never had a domain there.

I got errors when changing the domain’s nameservers to Afternic. I connected with chat support, and they said it appeared to be an invalid nameserver. I told them that wasn’t the case, and they escalated the issue to their domains team. Later that day, I received an email saying the problem had been resolved and that the domain was now pointing to the Afternic nameservers.

Except, it doesn’t. It still points to the old nameservers; now, the previous owner’s site is resolving!

Getting your wins at random registrars is painful, and I try to avoid any domains not at Network Solutions or Register.com when I can.

Granted, even when a domain is inserted in your Network Solutions or Register.com account, there is some pain and suffering:

  • You get an email verification for every domain you register, and you have to click this for your domain to be active in the DNS
  • These registrars don’t let you add the Afternic ownership verification nameserver
  • It’s a tedious process to transfer out

I’ll finish this rant with a couple of nice things about SnapNames.

First, it’s nice that all of my Network Solutions wins land in one account.

Second, you can instantly opt into the Afternic network. Even GoDaddy requires you to wait 60 days.

(By the way, if you’re using NameJet instead of SnapNames, you’re wasting money. SnapNames doesn’t charge credit card fees.)

Post link: Buying on SnapNames is better, but still not great

© DomainNameWire.com 2024. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact editor (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

Tagged in :