Spaceship recently upped the commission rate it charges for sales on its SellerHub platform. Spaceship started out by charging 5% to close a deal on the platform, and the commission rate was just increased to 10%. This wasn’t unexpected, but I think the company could have done a better job rolling it out while explaining why the change was necessary.
Doron Vermaat is the CEO and Founder of Efty, a domain name sales platform that recently started allowing buyers and sellers to transact via its Efty Pay offering. Efty Pay charges a 5% fee for transactions. Sellers can still opt to close deals using third party escrow and sales platforms without having to pay a commission to Efty beyond the monthly platform fee for landing pages.
In a well-written post on X today, Doron went into great detail to explain why the Spaceship commission increase is reasonable and why Efty is still able to offer a 5% commission rate. Doron outlined the fees, operational costs, and payment risks that domain name sales platforms take on when they facilitate a transaction. This doesn’t even cover the marketing costs incurred by domain sales platforms to get buyers to convert.
I think Doron’s post sheds some light on why commission rates tend to be substantial.
Spaceship moving to 10% commission had some folks losing their minds, but can we talk for a second about what it actually costs to move a domain?
We run Efty Pay at 5%. I’ll be the first to tell you: at 5%, the math is absolute dogshit.
If you think running a marketplace is…
— Doron Vermaat (@doronvermaat) February 13, 2026
