The Domain Hunter
Find expired domains with real SEO value in seconds
Hey hunters 👋
Quick update from the founder — we had a technical issue earlier today that took the site down for a few hours. Gutted it happened on launch day, but here's the silver lining:
We used the downtime to do a full security overhaul. API keys are now properly locked behind a server-side proxy, rate limiting is in place, and the whole setup is significantly more robust than it was this morning.
The Domain Hunter is back up and fully working at thedomainhunter.io
If you tried it earlier and hit errors — I'm sorry, and I'd love for you to give it another shot. You still have your free hunts waiting.
We're finding expired domains with real SEO value, AI valuations, alternative suggestions, and outreach emails — all in one place, for a fraction of what competitors charge.
Founding Member spots at £9.99/month are still available — locked for life while they last.
Thanks for your patience and support on launch day. This one means a lot. 🙏
— Lee, founder
So today was supposed to be the big day.
The Domain Hunter went live on Product Hunt. I'd spent weeks building it — an AI-powered expired domain finder that does in seconds what used to take hours of manual searching.
Then it fell apart.
Within hours of launch, Anthropic flagged that my API key was exposed in the frontend code. The site went down. On launch day. Position 465 on Product Hunt.
Here's what I did:
Rotated all exposed keys immediately
Rebuilt the entire security architecture — API calls now go through a Cloudflare Worker proxy, rate limiting added, server-side free tier tracking implemented
Got the site back up within a few hours
What I learned:
Never put API keys in frontend code. Ever. Even base64 encoded. It's not hidden.
Launch day disasters are actually a story. Own them publicly and people respect it.
Indie Hackers > Product Hunt for genuine early traction in my experience today.
The site is fully working now at thedomainhunter.io — 3 free hunts, no account needed.
If you tried it earlier and hit errors, I'd love for you to give it another shot. And if you've got feedback, brutal honesty welcome.
Day 2 starts now. 🚀Try it free: https://thedomainhunter.io Build Board: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/the-domain-hunter
After months of building as a solo founder from Pattaya, Thailand — The Domain Hunter is officially live today on Product Hunt.
The problem: finding expired domains with real SEO value is a nightmare. You're jumping between Ahrefs, Archive.org, GoDaddy, manually checking everything. Hours wasted on domains that turn out to be worthless.
The solution: paste a domain, get an AI-powered score in seconds. Authority, backlinks, spam flags, niche relevance — all surfaced instantly.
Founding Member spots are still open at £9.99/month, locked for life.
Would love your support on Product Hunt today 👉 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-domain-hunter
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This is such an honest account of what launching actually looks like. The API key issue is a brutal lesson but you caught it fast and kept going — that's what matters. I'm in the early stages of selling financial templates for startups and posts like this remind me that every launch has its chaos. How long did it take you to get back up and running after the site went down?
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Honestly not long — maybe 20 minutes once I actually figured out what was wrong. The debugging was the painful part, staring at it thinking the whole app was broken when it was just a missing API key 😅 Good luck with the financial templates — the chaos is real but it's also kind of the best part of launching solo. You catch things you'd never catch in testing.
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Congrats on shipping this, Lee! Finding expired domains with real SEO value is genuinely painful — I've been through the same manual process myself while working on my own tool. The AI-powered scoring angle is smart, especially surfacing spam flags instantly. That alone saves hours. Solo founding from Thailand is no joke either — the timezone difference with most of your audience must make launch day interesting! Upvoted on Product Hunt. Curious — are you planning to add bulk domain checking down the road?
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Cheers mate, really appreciate the upvote! Yeah the manual process is a nightmare — that's exactly why I built it. The spam flag surfacing was actually one of the first things I prioritised because I kept getting burned wasting time on domains that looked clean but were blacklisted.
Bulk checking is absolutely on the roadmap — probably the most requested feature already. The plan is to let users paste or upload a list and run the AI scoring across the batch. Should be coming in a future update. What kind of volume were you thinking — tens or hundreds at a time?
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this is a real pain point, especially the time wasted jumping between tools just to validate one domain
having everything in one place with an AI score makes a lot of sense
since you're launching now and looking for traction, you could also try putting this into a competition
good way to get early visibility + validate interest quicklyalso, prize pool just opened at $0, so your odds are the best right now
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Thanks so much — you've nailed exactly what we're solving. The jumping between tools to validate a single domain is genuinely painful and we've killed that workflow in one place. Really appreciate the competition tip too, just looking into that now. 🙏
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glad that helps 🙂
this is the one I was referring to: tokyoloredotcom
$19 entry, winner gets a Tokyo trip (flights + hotel covered)
since the prize pool just opened at $0, competition is still pretty low right now
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Ha cheers for sharing that — not gonna lie, a Tokyo trip for $19 is a pretty wild value prop if the prize pool is still early. I'll have a look. Good luck if you're in it!
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Quick update — Round 01 is now live and entries are coming in. Once we hit 100 entries, this round will close and the winner gets locked in. Right now is the earliest stage, so this is your best chance to enter while odds are highest.
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Ha — that is exactly the idea. Round 01 is wide open right now, prize pool at $0, so whoever enters first has the best odds AND watches the prize grow with every new entry after them.
If you have an idea worth throwing in, now is genuinely the best moment. tokyolore.com — takes 5 minutes
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Solo founder, built in 6 weeks from Thailand. The Domain Hunter finds expired domains with real SEO value in seconds using AI. No more tab-switching between Ahrefs, Archive.org and GoDaddy. Live now on Product Hunt 👉 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-domain-hunter
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