dustonio's dashboard

In the past month and a half I have purchased 35 domains from Name.com, after noticing the price hike from Blue Razor and Go Daddy (with whom I have 105 domain name). Each week I purchase a few more because of the growth of my web hosting and web design business.

And to be honest, I only resell the domains I reserve for $10/year because it is a small service I provide to my customer. Although domain reservation is not something I'm looking to get rich on, a dollar or two for each domain starts to add up over the volume of all my domains, which goes up one or two new domains each week.

I am therefore somebody who is interested in (1) Low price of domains; and (2) Speed in management of these domains. For this reason I would be interested in a reseller program where I can lower my costs. If my switching costs are low to switch the 100+ domains from Go Daddy/Blue Razor, this would be something I would consider as it makes business sense for me.

Because I am very familiar with the order process and management system of Go Daddy and Blue Razor (I've been a customer of theirs since 2000) and have used the Name.com's system over the past month and a half (since Nov 2008), the following are things that I really like about Name.com:
- When I travel internationally, I am able to purchase via credit card from the web (Go Daddy/Blue Razor requires me to make a international phone call)
- I absolutely love having Google Apps integrated from the start. I set up all my new accounts with it so they can get branded email addresses. I know that one customer above mentioned he doesn't use it much, but I certainly find it very helpful to have it integrated at the moment of reserving a domain.
- I find it extremely easy to set up the A Record so that the new domain points to my server's location instantly.
- I like that the order process is not filled with a lot of bloat and special offers. However lately I do not like seeing all the different available names and extensions to purchased when all I want to buy is a single .com TLD.
- I like getting the email notification when I've logged into my account; it gives me a warm-fuzzy feeling.
- I do like the integration with GetSatisfaction.com

Things that I think Name.com could improve:
- I really wish I could see the price discount after entering in a coupon code in the checkout page. Right now I don't see any price reduction until after the transaction has already taken place and my credit card is charged. This annoyed me when I found out a coupon code no longer worked and I was billed the full amount.
- Because of my volume, I was really attracted to the $5.99 domain names from Early November, but now I miss the $6.99 from Late November. The coupons are no longer available on the homepage and therefore your current price is only 2.8% less expensive than Blue Razor. As a buyer with a growing volume of domain names, I would hope to have some special pricing so it makes business sense for me to keep all my domains with Name.com.

eppsilon, I agree. Having a separate blog would have been a great way for us customers to know what is going on. It would be an efficient way for us to stay in the loop of whether or not blinksale is undergoing maintenance, a server upgrade, or *gasp* gone out of business.

Do you have a link for Harvest? Or did you mean Orchard (billingorchard.com)?

Maybe they're upgrading their web site or server, which is why it is down. If so, they made a mistake by doing it on a Friday morning rather than late on a Saturday evening when fewer people would likely use their site. Having their web site go down is one of the major disadvantages of depending on Software as a Service (SaaS).

Unfortunately I depend on many SaaS companies for my business including Salesforce.com, Google Apps (with Gmail), and Blinksale. I have had pretty good luck until now.

I've been a Blinksale customer since Aug 2007, and have had good service with them. This is the first time that I've noticed that I could not access my account at a time where it is crucial for me.. They've been very prompt about answering my questions and suggestions for feature upgrades...usually in about only one hour.

However now that my business has grown, I cannot afford to be sitting and waiting for their site to come online. I sent an email to support@blinksale.com and have not heard anything back. Unfortunately I also do not have a telephone number to call them and see what is going on.

If this outage continues beyond the weekend, I may need to shop for a new company that can handle my invoicing needs.