DN.com Launches as Escrow Service

For quite some time, I think Escrow.com was the only independent licensed escrow service for domain name transactions. More recently, Agreed, Escrow Hill, and eCop launched escrow services targeting the domain name space, and I just learned that another company, DN.com, has entered the market. Based on the timing of the tweet above, the company launched a couple of days ago.

According to the About page on the DN.com website, DN.com is “an international domain name escrow platform, affiliates with the well-known domain marketplace 4.cn. DN.com aims to assist customers to proceed secured international domain name transactions.

As you may recall, the DN.com domain name was being brokered by Domain Holdings with an asking price of $750,000. Shortly after the listing went public, I noticed a Whois changed, and in a subsequent article, I asked “Did 4.CN Acquire DN.com?” Shane Cultra later reported that the company confirmed it had acquired the domain name and Shane  said the company planned to “create a brand new platform that targets a larger international audience.”

After reporting the sale of DN.com and reading more about it on Shane’s Blog, I would not have imagined that DN.com would be launched as an escrow service. My guess would have been a domain name marketplace with domain name sale listings, auctions and everything else a large sales platform offers. Perhaps it will evolve into that at a later date because the broad DN.com brand would allow that, but the tagline below the logo seems to indicate that DN.com is solely focused on escrow services.

When you visit DN.com, you’ll notice the website is published  in Chinese. In order to access the English version, you’ll need to click the small American flag in the upper right hand corner. I found that the website recognized me on subsequent visits, so English now seems to be the default for me. After reading several of the pages within the website, it looks like they hired a pretty good translation service, which is a smart move considering the nature of the business.

It will be interesting to see how the company evolves and if domain investors are willing to use them for escrow services since the company appears to be located in China.

Thank you to Bill Sweetman for sharing news about the launch of DN.com.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

15 COMMENTS

  1. I use eCop.com a lot, and they are located outside the USA, and I have had great experiences with them, but the main reason I use them is that they offer much more flexible domain escrow arrangements than other services do (without me having to pay typical custom escrow type fees). I don’t see any reason why I would ever use an escrow service in China, unless the buyer suggests it and only the buyer has to escrow something (money) with them. I would not want to escrow my domains with them. But, if it works like escrow.com where they don’t actually hold my domains, then I would be fine with it.

  2. With all the money they spend on the domain you’d think they could have been a bit more original, they are using a logo that is very similar to that of Escrow.com

  3. I hope they will focus on financing and leasing.

    Escrow.com has been the unique escrow service for a dozen of years or more and they stopped the entire market refusing to offer finance and lease options under $ 75K until few months ago. That was a riduculous choice which stopped the growth of the entire market for at least 12 years!

    There is an huge need to recover, so welcome DN.com!

  4. As competition for escrow heats up, these services could begin to publish transaction statistics. Even with non-disclosure (NDA) of specifics, if Escrow.com listed their top 50 domain transaction amounts each month, and we see for example 36 sums were under NDA, still useful for the domain sales industry…

    • I don’t see that happening. As a buyer and as a seller, I wouldn’t want the third party escrow company reporting sales I want private, and it would cost them customers as I would choose an alternative and assume others would, too.

    • Escrow firms shouldn’t identify & announce transactions. But as “metadata” without identifying info, there’s value to knowing top sales figures, and there’s little downside to me locating my July sales in a longer list as:
      8. $210,000
      43. $27,900

  5. I don’t often post, but when I do — Another escrow company, don’t think I will be sending money to China. We have two licensed and regulated companies here in the US that provide services worldwide, Brandon and Escrow.com and Ammar with Agreed both very transparent when you look for their information, we have Andee and Gregg with a “registered” company in New Zealand – you have to dig for their information and there is a huge difference between being registered and actually having a license, we have Francois with ecop.com who says he is licensed in France, again hard to find information, but since he is active here he will probably explain his licensing requirements and responsibilities. And now we have DN.com where I could find no licensing or registration information………Doesn’t make sense to me, but good luck.

    • Hi Tony,

      DN.com belongs Hangzhou Duomai E-Commerce Co.,Ltd., which is a registered company in China and also an accredited registrar recognized by ICANN. What DN.com knows better than our competitors is domain names, we also have our own anti-fraud technology. You should give it a try. And thank you for your interest in DN.com.

  6. Hi DN,
    I think you’re missing Tony’s point. Agreed and Escrow.com are government licensed, if anything should happen to them there are built in protections for their clients assets, this is required in the form of insurance policies and bonding. The jurisdiction is California, USA. Escrowhill is registered in New Zealand, apparently no license or government oversight required. Ecop, “managed by Cybertonic, a company licensed in France.” I have not been able to find any information on what that license might be for. Your new company, I appreciate that you “know” domain names, but I will keep my transactions where they are protected and insured.

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