For the last couple of weeks, I had difficulty accessing the Afternic website. I posted a note on Twitter asking if others had the same issue, and I was relieved to learn that a few others were also unable to access the website because it seemed like an isolated issue. When I checked Afternic’s status on Down For Everyone Or Just Me, I saw that the site was operating. I was also able to access Afternic when I was on my iPhone.
Afternic and GoDaddy engineers were made aware of the issue, and the outage was resolved late last week. I asked what caused the outage, and Bob Mountain, Chief Revenue Officer at Afternic shared the following information with me:
“In late August, we were made aware that a small subset of customers were unable to access Afternic.com. These customers were unable to access the website, but were still able to completely manage their accounts through our customer services team. We have investigated the issue and determined it was a firewall setting. We have fixed the issue. If someone is still experiencing issues, we recommend they contact us at service@afternic.com.”
During the outage, I relied on Afternic’s support team to add and remove domain names as well as update pricing. Since most of Afternic’s sales are done via GoDaddy (at least in my experience), I presume the outage did not impact sales. In fact, I was able to close one deal and negotiate two other deals with Afternic brokers throughout the outage.
It wasn’t a big deal, although it was a bit inconvenient, so I am glad to see that the issue was resolved. If you’re still experiencing connectivity issues, get in touch with Afternic using the email address Bob provided.
Still having lots of connectivity issues. People generally do not respond when I email them at the email you listed, and when they do, it always takes minimum 4-5 days, so I don’t understand how I’m supposed to manage my portfolio with a 5 day delay.
Logins are sent in plain text (really poor security), https is usually not possible. When I do manage to log in, changes and domains added are often not saved. I keep getting logged out as well. I get asked to click on an activation email daily, which is another glitch. Afternic.com is run-down and dysfunctional, and GoDaddy reps have said they have no intentions of giving the platform a much needed update. Many domainers don’t use afternic at all because the site is too glitchy. I’ve had lots of buyers try, but fail, to buy my names via Afternic. They just couldn’t do it because the site wasnt working. They couldn’t open an account. Or the “buy now” button didn’t work. Or the payment didn’t go through. Etc. What’s the logic behind running their platform this poorly and not having any intentions of improving? They are losing sailes because of this! Emailing GD reps about these issues is so futile that I’ve given up. They show no interest, and have even said publicly that they won’t fix the platform, as their focus is solely on their registrar network.
This is a situation where both domain sellers, buyers, as well as Afternic themselves lose out. Is GoDaddy simply content with the sales their own portfolio provides, so they are fine with neglecting the Afternic.com site used by domainers? They are the largest registrar in the world, and their neglect of Afternic, which presumably bring them significant sums of commissions on a daily basis, remains a big mystery to me…
Joe Styler will keep saying we are working on it, but GoDaddy needs to spend some $$$ on this resource, it’s the clients they are failing.
I myself pushed a domain two weeks ago, and still have no scheduled payout date.
I will give them 2 more days at which point I will ask
For the return of my domain, and they can explain to their buyer.
Afternic has been a patch and bandage system for years. Godaddy management keeps reaping the rewards of 15-20% of pure profit sales, and fails to address, or repair issues.
The platform, and sales system is wacky, you can do a push, and they don’t acknowledge or pay you for weeks, good luck getting support, usually answer wrong, or cut, and paste.
Really sad as godaddy keeps failing.
I’m still facing this issue!