GeekWire “Buying A New gTLD The Process Really .Sucks”

Kevin Lisota is not a domain investor, instead he is CEO & Co-Founder of findwell, a Seattle real estate startup. He wrote a very good article for Geekwire that shows the frustation for many when trying to research and purchase new gtlds.

From the article:

Up until this year, buying a domain name was pretty straightforward. With one or two accounts at registrars like GoDaddy or namecheap, you could buy just about any domain extension. Transferring domain names was also relatively easy.

However, this year brings us the release of more than 600 new domain extensions from ICANN. Stuff like .reviews, .ninja or .technology. The expansion of generic top-level domain (gTLD) names is huge and unprecedented in internet history, but the confusion and difficulty in landing the domain that you want has also increased dramatically.

(Seattle is actually a hotbed of the gTLD industry with Bellevue-based Donuts being the largest registry of new gTLD extensions along with Rightside, which runs the Rightside registry, eNom and Name.com registrars. Mercer Island-based Top Level Spectrum is also in the thick of it.)

If you plan to buy a variety of domain name extensions, plan to use a variety of registrars. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to which registrars are supporting which extensions. Some support new domains during early access periods, while others do not.

.sexy has been out for awhile now. Here are the results I get when trying to register geekwire.sexy. How would a GoDaddy customer know that this domain might be available elsewhere? And why is 1and1 asking me to pre-reserve a domain that is already available?

Let’s try geekwire.dating. I can buy it at premium prices through the early access program at three registrars, but 1and1 only does pre-registration and namecheap won’t sell it to you until general availability.

Read the full article here