Twenty years ago, I “enjoyed” querying the web portal of Network Solutions for the availability of domain names that popped in my head, and watch them getting registered two weeks later.
Those were the days of “data trading” to key players in the domain market. The practice continued until the end of the monopoly by NetSol as the sole domain registrar.
For several years later my needs were limited to whether a domain was registered, and perhaps to whom. Tools such as those provided by registrars that emerged, such as GoDaddy, Stargate, and eNom were complemented by third party tools such as Whois.com.
It was around 2002 that I started using DomainTools, and soon hitting the daily limit in queries. In 2006 I bought a monthly, recurring subscription that through the years was grandfathered under various names.
In late 2012, DomainTools graciously converted that paid membership into a gratis, perpetual subscription. I still hit limits, depending on how heavily I researched domains. It was always a manual search, and punching in the captcha values challenging me to prove I’m human became a slight annoyance I could live with.
Over the course of a decade of having access to the DomainTools historic WHOIS, I was able to use that feature for a good cause: to alert victims of domain theft about a recent change in ownership, to warn others about active sales of stolen domain names, and to follow the path of cybercriminals as they laundered domains from one email change to the next.
DomainTools has been indispensable and I never questioned its value, just like every other sane domain investor. The few times that the system went down unexpectedly, I found myself tapping my fingers on the keyboard nervously, like an addicted smoker who ran out of cigarettes.
During the past decade I had the pleasure of meeting several employees and officers of DomainTools. The company always stood out at domain conferences, as its focus and presence were clearly bigger than the show we were both attending.
Coming from a corporate background that encouraged entrepreneurship, I began to realize that DomainTools had been growing too big to be part of the small radius of the domain industry’s core.
And who can blame them?
In a world dependent on big data, they possess the metrics that add value to their products. Dedicated tools for researching and battling cybercrime made DomainTools the next big sidekick for data security corporations, cybercrime analysts and national security enforcers.
The recent changes in the membership model clearly show that DomainTools is cutting the cord with its past, even though it’s displaying enough remorse to keep providing some of the info to us domainers.
Simply put, they could have ended all services outside of the corporate subscriptions, declaring a focus that fully excludes those that wanted to peruse data as before.
Personally, I’m left with mixed emotions, due to the personal connections with the company’s officers, and the long relationship that is now changing. I’m numb and saddened on behalf of many domain industry professionals, some of which are definitely outraged over the changes. I cannot blame them, realizing that DomainTools maintains an effective monopoly in big data related to WHOIS, and beyond.
Of course there are alternative tools out there, but none of them performs every task DomainTools does, and not as well.
While there have been challenges over the years in how DomainTools displays its valuable information, my interaction with the company helped them improve on the user experience. One could say, that my consultation on gratis terms matched their continuing provision of a service that is now increasing in price, many times over.
To many domain investors, the move is inexcusable and unjustifiable.
I will have to agree, that the price hike is not the primary issue, as is the restriction of data access to amounts that are exhausted very quickly. Personally, I perform 20-50 WHOIS queries per day, perhaps half of which include historic WHOIS searches. I would run out of my allotment in two to three days.
DomainTools is a company that handles several layers of data provision, and they have big goals. I’m certain that if they were a telco services company, thousands of affected subscribers would protest in unison about how the services changed. And yet, I have to wish them good luck, because I’m aware of how small the domain industry is, and how restrictive it can be to professionals with broader goals.
My criticism is thus muted by my willingness to see a company break through the boundaries of the domain industry.
I hope that they do understand, at a personal and professional level, that many domain investors, bloggers, creative professionals and industry newcomers even, will be seriously affected by the trickling of information that is now enforced.
Nicely written.
We as a company tried to use their paid offerings. They eventually emailed us saying we aren’t doing enough volume and that they have to discontinue our paid offering effective immediately. Keep in mind we were paying for it already and there was no predetermined agreement on how much volume we were supposed to do with them. We switched to a competitor and couldn’t be happier. We thought DomainTools would have the best offering and we didn’t give other companies a chance. Once we did we realized that there are actually better solutions out there. And as far as their business practice – honestly, sounds like a company that is taking customers for granted.
I really agree. It is the terrible restrictions they are putting on historical whois lookups. I probably do an average 6 historical whois lookups a day, and that would make a $1,000 a year membership of no use to me 26 days out of each month! And paying $7,500 for all the lookups I need is unpractical either.
Nicely written article, Theo. Some domainers are condemning DomainTools outright. I’m not, although I am immensely frustrated with this change.
I do understand that DomainTools shifted its attention away from domainer customers, preferring to focus on clients in cyber security, law firms, and other more lucrative niches. Granted, in order to maximize their revenue from those sources, DomainTools would be motivated to close the door to lower-priced access. After all, it’s tricky to sell X at both a medium and a high price point simultaneously.
The problem springs from this double audience. 1 industry can afford sky-high prices, while the other cannot. Yet both depend upon the data. We in the domain industry are badly affected by this severe repricing. We’re not simply upset that costs are going up. Rather, we’re anticipating what amounts to a blackout on historical whois information.
Technically the data remains available to us, but it is now priced out of reach so that (in practice) it won’t be used for some very important industry functions. Research-heavy articles are no longer affordable to write or publish. Therefore journalism will suffer. Recovering stolen domains (which some domainers have been doing pro bono) is now too expensive to undertake.
Metaphorically speaking, it’s now too costly to keep “street lights” lit on whois history. In the dark, we’ll all know less. In the dark, we’ll all be more at risk. For DomainTools it may make sense to set prices for 1 audience even if they exclude a 2nd audience. But for the domain industry (that 2nd audience) it’s quite a damaging blow. We’re right to be frustrated.
Small correction to the article. Originally, I used Internic to query domains, not Network Solutions. Looks like their web portal hasn’t changed in 15 years. 😀
https://www.internic.net/whois.html