Feedback on a domain parking idea
I've been constantly registering new domains for all the ideas I have – most of which I never use – and got kind of annoyed of setting up these domains so that they'd work (meaning that the domain either has a simple landing page or a working redirect using HTTPS URL).
This was all manual set up on my VPS and fun for the first time but not the 10th. Using existing hosting services was kind of out of the question as these usually charge by each domain/site and most of my domains are worth nothing because it is a future idea, not something I'm already working on.
In the end I built myself a system to automate all these things, so I could point name servers of the new domain to my domain parking system and it would set up everything automatically - DNS records, HTTPS certificates, minimal landing page, email accounts/forwarding etc.
I'm thinking that maybe other people would also be interested in such solution, so I added a user handling layer on top of the existing system. It is now in "beta" which means that everyone can try it out (so far no-one besides myself have used it as I haven't "launched" it yet). It's in heavy development but already does everything it promises. I want to add a paid tier but not sure what direction to go with it - should I limit the free features, should I add something that is missing etc.
You can test it out yourself here: https://projectpending.com/
Any feedback appreciated.
Andris, I just came accross Project Pending while reading the docs on Nodemailer. I've only been developing with React (and more recently Next) for the past year or so, and I think I'm probably more your target market - seeing as how, like you said, developers at your level would likely find a technical workaround on their own.
I have to say I think it's an amazing idea. I hadn't imagined such a service could exist, and so I did some Googling to see what kind of feedback there was around the web, and ended up landing here at IndieHackers. I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me. I think you've already basically addressed this stuff on the official site, but I'd just like some clarification...
What actually happens when the project for a domain I've "parked" with Project Pending starts to take off? Is this when I would have to move up to a paid tier?
Would I have the ability to move my domain registration to another provider (if for some reason that were required)?
Do I maintain full ownership of the domain throughout?
Again, this service blows my mind - it seems too good to be true, and that's why I wanted to clarify! Like I said, I'm probably your target market, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are others like me out there, wondering the same things.
Thanks very much!
Thank you for the kind words!
Project Pending is not a domain registrar but a DNS hosting service. You register your domain with a registrar (eg GoDaddy or Namecheap etc) and then, in the control panel of your registrar, point the nameservers of that domain to a DNS hosting service, eg. to Project Pending. You are free to change that whenever you like, you have total control which namservers your domain is using. If you do not want to use PP anymore then you can revert to the default DNS hosting of your registrar or use some other service. Main downside of switching DNS hosting provider is that the new one does not know all the existing DNS entries so you have to set up these again with the new provider.
Currently PP is “as is”. There is no paid tier as I don’t have enough interested users yet (and I haven’t implemented any plans/billing support into the webapp).
Ahh, I was thinking that you were acting as a registrar as well, but now that I re-read the website it clearly doesn't say that lol. Very cool though, all the same! I have a couple of domains that could benefit from exactly this, so thank you!
I had a similar idea but it was domain name staging for me, so basically making a landing page that's related to the business.
For example divorce lawyers in ohio would have a page for lawyers.
I was targeting people with parked domains that were planning on flipping them for example.
I like your angle too.
How much would the paid tier be?
I figured the target market would be people like myself so the paid tier would have to cost about the same or less than doing it myself. Setting up a VPS to manage parking by hand costs about $5/mo, so my paid tier would be the same.
Even though now that I think of it, targeting the service to people like myself is not a good idea as these people rather build their own system than buy it as a service 😀
Have you seen what newsy.co does?
I honestly think it shouldn't cost you money to park the domain, so 5$/month sounds like a lot.
I picked domainers because they want to sell their domain and maximize the ROI, so far I haven't been able to prove there's a need so I parked the idea 🙂
Haven't heard of newsy.co before. Seeing that I think I have to think of a different term than domain parking for my service as parking seems to imply that you would be running ads on that domain and receiving revenue. I'm more thinking of a limited web hosting solution where you get everything you'd get from a normal web hosting service for your domain only that you'd get just a single index.html file you can set up any way you like. Or redirect the domain somewhere else entirely. So no ads, no revenue, no ROI.
Example use case - I have an open source project in Github called Pangalink. I also have a domain name pangalink.net. Now I want that whenever someone opens https://pangalink.net then it would redirect to this Github project page (and this is how it works due to Project Pending). Usual redirect services, ie. the ones provided by registrars and web hosting co's does not allow redirecting over HTTPS protocol, just HTTP.
Just to be clear, whatever the cost, it is not for parking a single domain but for unlimited domains. I for example have about 20 domains that I now park on my account at Project Pending.
That's a different story then. It's totally worth it. 🙂