DomainTools Announces Major Redesign

I use DomainTools daily for Whois lookups and for historical Whois searches to find domain owners. In November of 2013, the DomainTools website saw a significant redesign, and in January of this year, the company redesigned its Whois history tool.

This evening, DomainTools sent an email to its members announcing “a major overhaul of the Whois results page.” I received the email just a few moments ago, and I haven’t had a chance to go through the changes yet. I use DomainTools many times a day, and I am sure this is going to take some time to get accustomed to the new website.

Because there are many people in the business who use DomainTools but may not have a membership, I am taking the liberty to share the email content with you so you can see what has changed. If you have any feedback for the DomainTools team, you are welcome to share it here or directly with the company.

DomainTools Redesign Announcement:

Even the most beautiful historic buildings at some point need a renovation to fortify existing infrastructure, bring it up to date in modern features and clean up some aging wall dressing. The #1 Whois service is undergoing just such a renovation. We have just released a major overhaul of the Whois results page to make it cleaner, faster, easier to navigate, more efficient and leveraging a more modern design.

Check it out: whois.domaintools.com

We had a few goals in this project:

  • To make it easier to find the most valuable and most used information. So we brought that data higher on the page and flattened our results by removing tabs.
  • To make it easier to access our deeper investigation tools. So we made a “tools” section as well as easy-to-locate action links on relevant data points.
  • To make it faster. We decreased load time by removing old code and some elements that were slowing us down.
  • To make it cleaner and more modern. So we used modern design principles to highlight the most valuable aspects and remove design elements that were distracting.

For details on the changes and how to get the most out of the new features, read the User Guide.

The design and data structure includes input from users from our support pages, email and social media and we tested prototypes with a number of subscribers. We hope you find it more efficient and visually pleasing. Many of our users use the Whois page as a starting point for deeper investigations leveraging our Reverse Products (Reverse Whois, IP, Name Server & Mail Server) and our Whois History. We’ve consolidated these options into the upper right where you can quickly pivot an investigation into any of these areas.

We understand that for long-time users any change represents a change in habits. We hope that in a short amount of time you come to appreciate the new design and the efficiency gains it aims to provide. If, after you’ve tried it, you have suggestions on how we can improve it, we’re always listening at product@domaintools.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

60 COMMENTS

  1. Here goes…Not only small, but being much too weak and having extremely poor contrast because of the washed out and faded out font color chosen, hence difficult for people who don’t exactly have the visual acuity and eyesight of the average fighter pilot, race car driver, or someone with only very mild vision issues at the worst which are also very easily fully correctable with mild glasses or contacts. In my experience this is sometimes one of the most overlooked and unrealized mistakes in software development because, according to my theory, which I believe is a pretty spot on theory, especially since I’ve definitely spent a lot of time around IT developers as well, yada yada, the people who often make these kinds of design and aesthetic decisions don’t think about it in terms of anything but their own experience and preferences. They and their close partners in these kinds of projects tend to have great eyesight or at worst only mild and easily correctable eyesight, so they love tiny fonts and the new fad of looking faded out or having little contrast. But it’s a real problem for others, and in my opinion still bad and inefficient for people with good eyesight as well. So the bottom line is you really need to consider those who are not so fortunate and use strong fonts with good visual contrast and good readability, and people will really appreciate it.

    That said, I’m not in the mood to talk about some of the other big changes about DT now, otherwise I definitely would. I’ll bet you’re not paying the huge new fee, Elliot 😀

  2. Here goes…Not only small, but being much too weak and having extremely poor contrast because of the washed out and faded out font color chosen, hence difficult for people who don’t exactly have the visual acuity and eyesight of the average fighter pilot, race car driver, or someone with only very mild vision issues at the worst which are also very easily fully correctable with mild glasses or contacts. In my experience this is sometimes one of the most overlooked and unrealized mistakes in software development because, according to my theory, which I believe is a pretty spot on theory, especially since I’ve definitely spent a lot of time around IT developers as well, yada yada, the people who often make these kinds of design and aesthetic decisions don’t think about it in terms of anything but their own experience and preferences. They and their close partners in these kinds of projects tend to have great eyesight or at worst only mild and easily correctable eyesight, so they love tiny fonts and the new fad of looking faded out or having little contrast. But it’s a real problem for others, and in my opinion still bad and inefficient for people with good eyesight as well. So the bottom line is you really need to consider those who are not so fortunate and use strong fonts with good visual contrast and good readability, and people will really appreciate it. That said, I’m not in the mood to talk about some of the other big changes about DT now, otherwise I definitely would. I’ll bet you’re not paying the huge new fee, Elliot 🙂

  3. So my account is also very old, years old, and yes I did kick in some revenue before, as compared to “0.” Before the first big recent change, you could do the searches on regged, deleted, begins with, ends with, or includes anywhere within for free. Some time before the first recent change, they started limiting how many of those you could do without logging in, but if you logged in you would be allowed to continue. For me, however, that all stopped after the first recent design change, and logging in only resulted in the requirement of either something like $500 for a year or around $50 for a month to the best of my recollection now. Haven’t even looked at the fees in a while now. Would be great if they would put it back the way it was before, however. I realize they want to make money like everyone else, but I really have to wonder if this has been a financially effective move or has simply alienated people and resulted in even less revenue than they were making before. And now Elliot here is talking about a “grandfathered” account. I would actually almost bet my account may be older than his, but regardless it definitely doesn’t sound like everyone has the same “grandfathering” happening.

    • P.S. For a long time before the first most recent big change, the search functionality has also often been malfunctioning, mainly when trying to navigate pages of results. I wonder if that still is the case, but definitely wouldn’t have wanted to pay ~$500 to find out.

      Another really odd anomaly was the phenomenon of regged domains not showing up in any results where they should. That was happening a *lot*. If you typed in the missing ones, however, you could get them to show, but having to do that mostly defeated the purpose of using the tool…

    • To clarify a bit, I had a paid membership since well before they made changes to the membership levels, and the membership did not lapse so I was able to keep it.

    • Okay, ty that makes it feel a bit better at least. Sounds like what a big famous email provider did with those who were already paying. However…

      Would be great if they could let people keep the privileges everyone already had for com, net, org, info, biz, us – minus the new gTLDs unless one pays. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the only reason why they did what they did was because of cost involved in getting the new gTLD data. If that’s so, then the new gTLDs ruined it for everyone using DT who mainly wanted to use the free privileges for the first six TLDs already in place.

      Just try to imagine what a shock it was – after using DT for years and years, all of sudden you show up and it’s $500 or $50 or thereabouts – or nothing! Put on your empathy cap and contemplate it for a moment – can you imagine what a shock that is? And doubly so when it’s accompanied by the usual fanfare about what great exciting new changes and improvements have now been launched, and aren’t y’all so glad? Yay!

      Yes, I certainly appreciate what I received all those years. But think about it – all those years and then – wham! No in-between, not even any heads up or warning I ever saw – just wham (!)

      And don’t forget, like I said, I did kick in some money before.

      So, as I already said above – if it’s this great tsunami of beloved new gTLDs 😉 that has increased cost beyond what people had *been made to be accustomed to for a long time before*, then why not just write some code so that all the same privileges for com, net, org, info, biz and us are restored to exactly what they were before the new gTLDs, with the fees only kicking in for the latter and the extra services one might want to sometimes buy, such as whois history, etc.? Sounds very customer friendly to me.

      And the first big change did coincide with the new gTLD’s btw.

      And don’t forget as well, not only were we hit with that with no apparent warning I ever saw, but we also lost the G. keyword tool. The whole enchilada has most definitely felt like the big fish shutting out the aspiring little ones.

  4. I plan to share some feedback tomorrow when I use the Whois tool during the course of my day. I really like the fact that they have a list of the most popular TLDs on the right side rather than showing the ccTLDs. It’s not a huge change but makes it easier to see what other major TLDs are taken without having to do anything.

    More to come tomorrow…

  5. like others have said its hard to read. other than that maybe it will just take some time but not so easy to pick out key elements like create date, status, etc.

  6. Personally i prefer the old look.

    Maybe there could be an option were you can change version to the old one.
    Other then that i love the service.

  7. Ahhh,it’s alright, just a little fuzzy and will take time to get the hang of it from the old look.
    The thing that bugged me was, i went to see the website or splash page of a domain i was looking up, and it took me to DNS, and the page locked up my computer, it’s done that before on franks site.
    Most likely my dumb luck…lol

  8. Upgrade? Not so much… The text is technically the most important thing the user needs/wants to see and it reminds me of a captcha image. Blurred and distorted. The text displayed needs to be bold, clear and crisp and needs to be fixed!

  9. I immediately gave them feedback yesterday that the new font was terrible. It’s much too fine and faint. The whois data is still in a good old fashioned easy to read font, but the font everywhere else is unacceptable for me. Whimsical fonts should be saved for whimsical sites. I need a clean and easy to read font when I’m reading real data.

    I immediately received a response from Tim Helming the Director of Product Mgmt thanking me for my feedback and saying they were looking at options to make the font stand out better.

    In my opinion they don’t need to do anything fancy to make it easy to read. Just keep it simple and use a standard font.

  10. Is June considered the best month to screw up your website?
    First – Moniker. Now DT.

    Tim C. and Ammar are not getting younger. So, reading small print is not easy for us ‘old people’. Even though, Ammar is a lawyer. 🙂

    Grey??? what were they thinking?

    I did the smart phone test, the font is a little darker but not much. But, it seems to load slower than in the past.

    I guess they didn’t make much commission from sales thru Afternic and Sedo so it appears they dropped displaying that option.

    Change for change is not always the best answer.

  11. The font is horrific. I had the same gasping thoughts when I saw the new site yesterday. I can’t read it. How did this font get anybody’s approval?

    Even more I have a very hard time finding the links I want that make DomainTools valuable. The “whois history” and the “ip history” and things like that are now hidden. Lots to be desired with this “upgrade”.

  12. The links (now buttons) for whois history, hosting history, etc. all open a new browser window. This is very frustrating navigation and I end up with 20 windows open just researching 1 domain. It was much better when the links opened in the same window.

    And what’s with all the buttons instead of links? Buttons are fine when used sparingly, but now they make most every link on the page a button. It looks bad and does not create an optimal navigation experience.

    Why do people insist on fixing things that are not broken? I use DomainTools all day, every day. Everything worked and looked fine, and now it doesn’t. It makes me frustrated. Just keep it simple and leave well enough alone!

  13. All,

    Thanks for your feedback. Rest assured that it didn’t fall on deaf ears–we just pushed an update that makes the font in the Whois results darker and heavier, and we also fixed a rendering problem that was probably the culprit in some of the readability issues on Windows machines.

    Please feel free to send feedback directly to product@domaintools.com if you wish–we are always interested.

    Kind regards,

    Tim Helming
    DomainTools

  14. Tim, much appreciated! The new font being used is much better! Kudos for a quick fix.

    As to my previous comment. I think a great benefit to me, and to DomainTools would be to make the “Whois History” link in blue and available to everyone without having to hover to get at it. After all, this is one of DomainTools most used features. (I would presume) And for users that are not logged in, get them into the sales funnel! Hiding these links is probably going to take revenue away from you as new users to the system won’t realize that is one of DomainTools most powerful features.

    • Hi, KD

      We do treat Whois History as you suggest in the Tools section at the upper right–you can click right on the button and presto, you’re there.

      However, the fact that this didn’t pop out right away is valuable for us to know, too. I’m glad you mentioned it.

      -Tim

  15. >”The font is horrific.”

    The service fees are horrific for those of us who had no idea they were even coming one day and would have at least joined at the “grandfathered in” fee level otherwise. So now we either pay up $500 or whatever it is now for a year, or have virtually no use compared to what we had been accustomed to before for com, net, org, info, biz and us. Seeming all because of the new gTLDs as well, but I have no need of new gTLD info at domaintools.

  16. Just did some scrolling up and noticed the dialog with Tim here. Well, glad they liked my observation and idea about the font. 😉

    • I definitely miss very much the level of use of it that I had before, but I’m not going to start paying $49.95 a month or $499.50 a year to get the same access I was getting for free for years until one overnight change. I don’t even spend that regging new domains any more and have been scaling down, and have no need whatsoever of using DomainTools for anything substantial involving the new gTLDs. I don’t really need it for any already regged domain I may be considering buying either. All the malfunctions I’ve mentioned above were definitely real and fairly frequent too. I believe some of the .com’s that would occasionally not show up in the results pages were mine even to the best of my recollection now, while some others were ones I was interested in and already knew existed, but their absence in the results pages could easily have led me or anyone else to not know they exist and perhaps not have thought of them. I was doing well enough with what you could do for free with with com, net, org, info, biz, and us. All of that changed overnight with the new gTLDs. Only once in a while I felt a desire to look into whois history. Years ago you could just pay $15 for a month’s access to whois history, not $49.95.

      To be honest I’m really surprised there’s no real competition out there that I’ve ever seen at least for com, net, org, info, biz and us. It seems to me that it should be fairly easy for someone to put out a competing service for those TLDs and provide the same kind of search capability except perhaps for the history part. The kinds of searches involved are very standard types of database queries for anyone who has any experience in IT development that relates to that, so we’re not talking about anything exotic there – begins with, ends with, includes, etc.

      I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps. I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data – which I **don’t need** as I already indicated – but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change (for the worse) that has taken place.

      I’ll be frank – I’m definitely among the alienated, as in it definitely alienated me. However, if they restored the same privileges as before for com, net, org, info, biz, and us then I would feel very unalienated and more inclined to occasionally spring for the paid features when I felt the need or strong desire to do so. Then of course there is also the idea of not merely one pricing level with the annual discount, but multiple levels that include a dirt cheap option for the minimums. That’s just marketing 101, and we know how much you like the topic of marketing, Elliot. The current one-rate only is frankly extremely odd marketing. Perhaps they are not even aware of these kinds of basic marketing issues involving pricing. What I was getting before for years, which is all I really desire now, should either still be free or at most only cost a very small fraction of the current $49.95 a month rate, perhaps something from $1 a month to $5 a month. That I believe would doubtless result in much more revenue from paid customers for them and probably be “no skin off their nose” since all they would have to do is a little code tweaking to create the different options. Only people who want “the whole enchilada” can pay them the $49.95 a month, especially if it includes data they have to pay more for now.

  17. I definitely miss very much the level of use of it that I had before, but I’m not going to start paying $49.95 a month or $499.50 a year to get the same access I was getting for free for years until one overnight change. I don’t even spend that regging new domains any more and have been scaling down, and have no need whatsoever of using DomainTools for anything substantial involving the new gTLDs. I don’t really need it for any already regged domain I may be considering buying either. All the malfunctions I’ve mentioned above were definitely real and fairly frequent too. I believe some of the .com’s that would occasionally not show up in the results pages were mine even to the best of my recollection now, while some others were ones I was interested in and already knew existed, but their absence in the results pages could easily have led me or anyone else to not know they exist and perhaps not have thought of them. I was doing well enough with what you could do for free with with com, net, org, info, biz, and us. All of that changed overnight with the new gTLDs. Only once in a while I felt a desire to look into whois history. Years ago you could just pay $15 for a month’s access to whois history, not $49.95.

    • To be honest I’m really surprised there’s no real competition out there that I’ve ever seen at least for com, net, org, info, biz and us. It seems to me that it should be fairly easy for someone to put out a competing service for those TLDs and provide the same kind of search capability except perhaps for the history part. The kinds of searches involved are very standard types of database queries for anyone who has any experience in IT development that relates to that, so we’re not talking about anything exotic there – begins with, ends with, includes, etc.

      I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps. I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data – which I **don’t need** as I already indicated – but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.

    • To be honest I’m really surprised there’s no real competition out there that I’ve ever seen at least for com, net, org, info, biz and us. It seems to me that it should be fairly easy for someone to put out a competing service for those TLDs and provide the same kind of search capability except perhaps for the history part. The kinds of searches involved are very standard types of database queries for anyone who has any experience in IT development that relates to that, so we’re not talking about anything exotic there – begins with, ends with, includes, etc.

    • I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps. I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data – which I **don’t need** as I already indicated – but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.

    • I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps. I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data – which I don’t need as I already indicated – but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.

    • I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps. I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data, which I don’t need as I already indicated, but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.

    • I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps. I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data, which I don’t need as I already indicated, but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.

      I’ll be frank, I’m definitely among the alienated, as in it definitely alienated me. However, if they restored the same privileges as before for com, net, org, info, biz, and us then I would feel very unalienated and more inclined to occasionally spring for the paid features when I felt the need or strong desire to do so. Then of course there is also the idea of not merely one pricing level with the annual discount, but multiple levels that include a dirt cheap option for the minimums. That’s just marketing 101, and we know how much you like the topic of marketing, Elliot. The current one-rate only is frankly extremely odd marketing. Perhaps they are not even aware of these kinds of basic marketing issues involving pricing. What I was getting before for years, which is all I really desire now, should either still be free or at most only cost a very small fraction of the current $49.95 a month rate, perhaps something from $1 a month to $5 a month. That I believe would doubtless result in much more revenue from paid customers for them and probably be “no skin off their nose” since all they would have to do is a little code tweaking to create the different options. Only people who want “the whole enchilada” can pay them the $49.95 a month, especially if it includes data they have to pay more for now.

    • I’d actually be surprised if they are not making less money now than they were with paying customers before this sudden big change and big spike in the pricing for paid service. Or if they are making more gross revenue, then of course I’d be surprised if they are not making either less profit, no profit, or now operating at a loss perhaps.

    • I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data, which I don’t need as I already indicated, but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.

    • I’ll be frank, I’m definitely among the alienated, as in it definitely alienated me. However, if they restored the same privileges as before for com, net, org, info, biz, and us then I would feel very unalienated and more inclined to occasionally spring for the paid features when I felt the need or strong desire to do so. Then of course there is also the idea of not merely one pricing level with the annual discount, but multiple levels that include a dirt cheap option for the minimums. That’s just marketing 101, and we know how much you like the topic of marketing, Elliot. The current one-rate only is frankly extremely odd marketing. Perhaps they are not even aware of these kinds of basic marketing issues involving pricing. What I was getting before for years, which is all I really desire now, should either still be free or at most only cost a very small fraction of the current $49.95 a month rate, perhaps something from $1 a month to $5 a month. That I believe would doubtless result in much more revenue from paid customers for them and probably be “no skin off their nose” since all they would have to do is a little code tweaking to create the different options. Only people who want “the whole enchilada” can pay them the $49.95 a month, especially if it includes data they have to pay more for now.

    • Okay, that was the last paragraph of my original reply, and here is an attempt at including the last sentence of the second to last paragraph:

      “I don’t know how much it costs them to include all the extra new gTLD data, which I don’t need as I already indicated, but I did come across the suggestion that this must be behind the change for the worse that has taken place.”

    • It wasn’t a mess like that before – my first attempts to get the paragraphs posts simply weren’t showing up, but now you have some duplicates. Would be nice to just be able to do straight posts…

    • There were a bunch in the spam folder, and I had to mark them as “not spam” before approving.

      Not sure why Akismet keeps marking your comments as spam.

      Next time you post a comment that doesn’t automatically get published, please email me so I can check the spam folder right away.

    • LOL… Watching hockey and moderating comments 🙂 please email me next time a comment gets marked as spam so I can approve it manually preventing you from having to post comments several times.

  18. Okay, folks, everything from my 11:29 pm reply to Elliot above down can be ignored because it is only duplicates. Unfortunately none of my first attempts to post were even showing up initially, so I was trying the route of breaking up into smaller posts, but Elliot has apparently caught and approved my original for 11:29 above plus every attempt. Take care…

  19. John,
    You know Elliot is no longer paying per word for posting?

    (Just teasing. Elliot never paid per postings.) 🙂

    I was exhausted towards end of the second overtime.
    Some of those hits in the first and second overtime were brutal especially when you realize they were already ‘spent’.

    I give the cameramen a lot of credit. I don’t know how they could continuously and correctly follow the puck.

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