Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year you’ve probably seen an ad or two for Uniregistry, a new registrar that was built for domainers. Yep, a registrar built specifically for us. But despite sponsoring just about every domaining publication out there I haven’t read many reviews from actual domain name investors that really made the switch.
As I don’t mind changing and it was time to start consolidating my portfolio anyway, I decided to open an account, move 10% of my portfolio as a test and see if they could live up to their marketing promises.
I am one month in and I have decided to move my entire portfolio. Here’s why:
The Uniregistry Platform
Remember that feeling when you upgraded from that bulky Nokia or Blackberry to your first smartphone? After just a couple of days of usage, it is hard to imagine life without it, which is pretty much how I felt after familiarizing myself with the Uniregistry interface. The company had the luxury of building something from the ground up and they used that opportunity to build a registrar that is fast, easy to use, looks super clean and comes without upsells or other distractions. This is all nice of course but it really is the domain name management, transfer center, bulk managing and domain tracker features where they really separate themselves from the competition. You can really tell it was built by and for domain name investors.
Customer Support
I have to give kudos to Godaddy for the excellent customer support that I receive whenever I have questions or issues but after spending a small fortune with them on registrations, transfers, renewals, auction purchases, hosting and other small stuff It would have been nice to have a dedicated account manager. Uniregistry made a very good first impression on me when Account Manager Chris Aguilar called on a Sunday afternoon to discuss my needs and requirements. Whenever I have something now I can just ping Chris on Skype and so far he’s been very responsive and helpful.
Security
I invest a lot of time and money in growing my domain name portfolio so I want it to be near impossible for anyone else to access my account. Two-step authentication is the perfect solution for this but Godaddy doesn’t support this security feature for customers outside the US (update: GoDaddy started supporting 2fa for all users in 2016) while Uniregistry supports free two-step verification for each and every account. They also offer free privacy on all your domains (if you’d like that).
Price
Last but not least: pricing. Uniregistry is unique in the sense that they are willing to work on custom bulk pricing with domain investors holding a decent portfolio size. I currently own 578 domain names of which 82% .Com, 6% .Co and the remaining 12% is a mixture of some new Gs and the odd .net, .org or ,biz. Once I move this entire portfolio to Uniregistry my yearly renewal fees will be $5,560 which is down 6% from $5,900 in yearly renewal fees at Godaddy and if I include the Godady Discount Domain Club membership fee of $8.99/month (based on a 24 month membership) then my yearly savings will exceed 7.5%. If you are heavily invested in .Co or the new gTLDs or when own a larger portfolio your savings could easily exceed 10% compared to most registrars.
Surely there are some cons as well, the biggest one imo being the limited brand recognition Uniregistry currently has with end-users. If you know how to sell a domain name, your buyer will often request a domain to be transferred into their GoDaddy account, meaning you can simply push a domain directly to their account and close the deal the same day. Another reason Godaddy remains popular with domainers is coupons. I personally don’t hand register that many domains but it is always nice to be able to register one for a couple of bucks if you need to. The solution for this is pretty simple of course, keep Godaddy for handregs and transfer them into Uniregistry when renewals strike.
