DomainTools Undergoes Site Redesign

DomainTools WhoisIf you are an active DomainTools user like me, you’ve probably noticed the DomainTools.com website has undergone an extensive re-design. I first noticed it live last night when doing a Whois search, and I saw the rest of the reveal this morning when the entire site went back online.

I was given an opportunity to test the site just prior to launch, and I am impressed with how easy it is to find everything. I was also able to discover a couple of tools I didn’t even know about. The company made sure to keep many things familiar, so the layout of records on Whois lookups is virtually the same.

It appears that the pricing structure and pricing have changed. Gone are the confusing “units,” replaced with actual costs in dollars. This is a very positive change, as it makes more sense to know what your costs will be rather than having to buy “units” of something that was previously a bit unclear to me. I have been assured that pricing structure will remain the same for current subscribers like myself, although the company did increase its pricing for the first time in ten years.

If you are an active user, I strongly recommend taking a tour of the website to save yourself some time. Maybe you’ll even discover a new tool along the way.

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

19 COMMENTS

  1. Yo, Elliot…

    I just saw Dog-Walkers.com on Bido (pre-bid section), its going to auction at $38 once it gets enough votes. Thought you might be interested.

    – TBC

  2. @Elliot,

    I generally avoid hyphens too, but LOVE ccTLD’s 😉

    BTW, as of this morning, we’ve had 12 offers on my “Cheeseburger” domain since I started posting here (late Nov., ’10) – funny…your little blog carries more influence than you probably realize.

    – TBC

  3. Elliot – Can you put a poll up seeing how many readers are subscribers to the paid service. It would be interesting to see how many are finding it valuable and/or paying for it each month. (Just an idea I think many would like to see and/or know.)

  4. The website design looks much more modernized and better.

    I only want domaintools to make reversewhois to be a lot cheaper. Now, they charge a few hundreds per search depending upon number of domains of the owner.

  5. I seems that their site redesign needs more work, currently I’m getting the following error:

    Internal Server Error – Read

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
    Reference #3.340d50c0.1297876310.cfd077

    Hopefully they will be back online soon.

  6. *

    Horrid!

    Poky and doesn’t load properly, if at all.

    Dang! Why do companies launch their “new and improved” sites without getting the bugs out?

    Why do computer geeks think that large, cumbersome programs are better than sleek, smaller programs that load easily?

    Their security certificate is invalid, so I can’t sign in to make a comment on their blog, which is why I’m making it here.

    Definitely not something I would consider paying for!

    *

  7. The cost of a standard membership has not only doubled but the Whois History is now limited to only 10 lookups per month (with the option of purchasing another 50 lookups for an additional $9.95/month). Hmm.. no thank you.

  8. @ Ed

    Price increases suck, but how else will you check up on the history of a domain name before you buy it? Will you rely on a friend who pays? That might get old for your friend pretty quickly 🙂

  9. @ Elliot

    You’re exactly right, Whois History lookups are very important. As a matter of fact I myself would estimate looking up 500+ Whois History profiles per month (not uncommon amongst domainers). So let’s do the math:

    50 Whois History lookups ($9.95/each month) x 10 = 500 lookups $99.50/month + $29.95/monthly standard membership =

    $129.45/month vs the old $15/month

    Yes, price increases do suck.. so what are the options? There are none. Therefore, huge price increase.

  10. Elliot is right, it’s not like price increases are fun for the Company either, but we need to continue to invest in providing new and better tools to our clients and have a business model that allows us to do so.

    It is especially hard to adjust off of 5+ year old pricing. $15/month is the price of 3 lattes for people running 6 and 7 figure domain businesses in part based on very valuable (as reiterated here) DomainTools data.

    Ed – heavy users will feel the brunt of our new pricing algorithm, and you clearly fall in this category. Opting for a Professional Membership + add-ons would bring your cost down to $99/month, and you could knock another 8% off that if you did annual pricing on the membership. Of course, as a current member, you are grandfathered and thus your price is still $15/month for all of your lookups.

    -Tim Chen, DomainTools.

  11. Apologies, bad math on my prior comment (no sleep last night). With 500 history lookups per month the pricing for a new user would be $50 for pro membership + $80 for add-ons. Sorry for the confusion.

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