Last week, Finlead first highlighted a big corporate name change involving Uniregistry and GoDaddy. It looks like the new corporate registrar name for domain names registered at Uniregistry is GoDaddy Online Services Cayman Islands Ltd. This comes on the heels of GoDaddy’s acquisition of Frank Schilling’s company, which includes Uniregistry and Name Administration.
GoDaddy isn’t wasting any time. pic.twitter.com/T2hrPYZRAW
— Finlead (@finlead) June 12, 2020
Winemaker.com has sold for $100,000, I learned late last week. The domain name was sold by NetIncome Ventures, the domain investment firm operated by industry veteran Garry Chernoff. Uniregistry broker Tom Aughton helped close the all-cash deal.
Because of GDPR, I am unable to see who acquired the domain name. Whois records show the new registrant appears to be based in Zurich, Switzerland. The name servers are currently set to default Uniregistry name servers, so more information about the buyer is not known. The Winemaker.com landing page has a “coming soon” message within the top header.
At the NamesCon live domain name auction in February of 2019, Frank Schilling acquired DomainNames.com for $370,000. The domain name was sold in the auction by Network Solutions, and it has been forwarding to Uniregistry’s website since the purchase was completed.
As you know, GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry and Name Administration from Frank Schilling. After speaking with a company spokesperson, I was able to confirm that GoDaddy has acquired DomainNames.com as a part of the Uniregistry acquisition.
GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry, but for Uniregistry customers who like the company’s user interface, platform, and tools, there will not be an visible changes to the user experience. Nobody has to transfer domain names to GoDaddy, nor do customers need to list domain names for sale on Afternic/GoDaddy or use GoDaddy’s platform. The only reported changes that are coming are contractual changes that Uniregistry emailed customers about a week ago.
GoDaddy’s Paul Nicks addressed this in a tweet last week:
In February of this year, GoDaddy announced that it reached a deal to acquire Uniregistry. As a result of this acquisition, there are going to be some changes for Uniregistry domain name registrants and customers. On March 31, Uniregistry emailed its customers to let them know what was going to be changing once the deal closes, “on or about April 8, 2020.” April 8th is coming up on Wednesday, and I want to share the email I received so people know what is happening and what to expect.
I appreciate how the email intertwined easy to read commentary with some required legalease to make it easier to understand what is changing and what is remaining the same. I would suggest reaching out to Uniregistry representatives or GoDaddy representatives if you have any specific questions about what will be happening to customers, domain names, and their accounts.
In short and from my understanding, not much is actually changing for Uniregistry customers beyond contractual changes that don’t seem like they will impact the customer experience.
Here is the email I received from Uniregistry:
One of the top news stories the past several weeks is the Coronavirus outbreak that has been making people sick throughout the world. Officially known as COVID-19, the novel coronavirus has sickened over 80,000 people and killed nearly 3,000 people. The continuing spread of the coronavirus is a scary situation that seems to be getting worse each day. It has also caused concern for people around the world who are searching online to learn about coronavirus and want to protect themselves from becoming infected.
I was curious to see who owns Coronavirus.com. I can see the domain name is registered to an entity called NameFind Cayman Islands LTD. As mentioned in an article yesterday, this company is associated with GoDaddy, so effectively, GoDaddy owns Coronavirus.com.
