Buying and selling
Domain aftermarket
The domain aftermarket is the resale market for names that are already registered: marketplaces, brokers, auctions and direct sales between owners.
What Domain aftermarket means in practice
A name on the aftermarket is registered by someone who is willing to sell it. Prices range from the cost of a normal registration to millions for the best names.
Expired names that are caught at the domain drop also appear on the aftermarket, sometimes with a markup.
Why it matters
If a good name is taken, the aftermarket is the way to buy it. Use an escrow service for a large purchase and check the name's history before you pay.
Try it
- Domain Audit What a domain used to be, from the Internet Archive, plus spam and blocklist signals.
- Domain Appraisal A strength report and a seller pitch for a .com name. Strength, not a price.
Related terms
- Domain appraisal A domain appraisal is an estimate of how valuable a domain name is. Automatic appraisals are rough guides at best, because real value depends on a buyer.
- Backorder (drop catching) A backorder is a request to a service to try to register a domain the instant it is deleted. Drop catching is the practice of doing this at scale.
- Domain blocklist A domain blocklist is a list of domain names reported for spam, phishing or malware, used by mail and security systems to block or flag them.