Streamlining Our Backend: Improving Afternic’s Efficiency

We’re making important changes to our backend infrastructure to enhance our services and prepare for future improvements. These updates are part of our ongoing commitment to providing a better experience for our sellers.

The Past: A Complex System

Since 1999, Afternic, the world’s largest domain marketplace, has been a driving force in domain name sales and has been part of the GoDaddy family since 2013. Our platform has played a crucial role in the success of many domain sellers in the industry.

As we grew, our backend became a complex web of interconnected systems. This architecture made implementing changes across multiple systems time-consuming, slowing our ability to innovate efficiently. We recognized the need for a strategic overhaul to improve our services more rapidly.

The Present: Gradual Infrastructure Upgrade

Over the last few months, we’ve been methodically updating sections of our backend “pipes” to streamline our internal listings architecture. This architecture connects your domain name listings and pricing to our services, including landing pages and the distribution network.

This approach allows us to make significant improvements without disrupting ongoing sales or user experience.

We’ve already made significant progress, consolidating several backend systems into a new single inventory management system. In July, we took a major step forward by updating GoDaddy’s search path to use this system for displaying aftermarket listings.

Latest Update: Connecting to the Afternic Seller UI

As the next step in our upgrade process, the next section of our ‘pipes’ is to update the Afternic Seller UI.

Over the next 24 hours your portfolio is being transitioned from our legacy system to the new backend infrastructure. This means going forward, your Afternic account will reflect more accurate and up-to-date information directly from our consolidated inventory management system.

What This Means for You

The new system provides a near real-time view into the same inventory management system used by GoDaddy search and other processes, ensuring consistency across platforms for your portfolio.

You may notice changes in the domain statuses displayed in the UI. This update eliminates discrepancies and provides a more accurate view of your domain’s status. If you see a domain as active in the UI, you can be confident it’s active elsewhere as well. In 24 hours, after the update is complete, you can check the current statuses on your Afternic portfolio page.

Two positive changes have already resulted from this upgrade:

1. Advanced Filtering: Now available to all users, enhancing your ability to manage and sort your domains efficiently.
2. Expanded Export Capabilities: Portfolio exports can now handle up to 100,000 domains, making it easier for large-scale domain investors to manage their listings. We’re working on increasing this limit even further in the near future.

The Future: Enabling New Features

Once we complete this consolidation across all of the systems it will create a foundation for faster development and rollout of new features.

For example, in the coming months this will unlock the ability for us to introduce self-service capabilities for domains in review, allowing you to address issues directly without contacting customer support.

We’re excited about these improvements and the foundation they lay for future enhancements. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to evolve our platform to better serve your needs.

Thank you for your trust in Afternic, and Happy Selling!