How buying and selling work here. The figures on this page are read from the same settings the auction engine runs on, so they are always the ones actually in force. The terms are the formal version.
You enter the maximum you are willing to pay, not the amount you want to bid now. The engine then bids the smallest amount needed to keep you in front, up to that maximum. Nobody — not other bidders, not the seller — ever sees your figure. If two bidders enter the same maximum, the earlier one holds the lot.
You can raise your maximum at any time. You cannot lower it, and you cannot take a bid back.
Holding lots are not running an auction. They have no closing date and no clock, and they sit there indefinitely until somebody bids.
Bidding on one is how an auction starts. Your bid is recorded, the owner is told, and the lot is marked pending — no further bids are taken while they decide, because there is no closing time yet to bid against.
The owner then has 7 days to pay £5 to open the bidding. If they pay, the lot moves to Showcase, your bid becomes the opening bid, and a 7-day auction starts. If they do not pay, your bid is cancelled and you owe nothing — it is the one case where a bid here does not commit you.
A bid in the last 10 minutes pushes the close back. Sniping in the final seconds does not work here; if you want a domain, the reliable move is to set your true maximum early and leave it.
Every clock on the site runs off the server's time, not your computer's, so a wrong clock on your machine cannot make a lot look closed while it is still open.
A visible reserve tells you whether it has been met. A hidden reserve does not — but the amount was fixed before bidding opened and published as a hash, and the figure and its nonce are released when the lot closes, so you can check afterwards that it never moved.
You pay us, not the seller. You have 3 days from the close. We hold your money while the seller moves the domain, we confirm the change of ownership ourselves, and only then does the seller get paid.
If the seller never transfers it, you get every penny back — commission included, because there was no completed sale to charge for. You are never left having paid for a domain you did not receive.
Failing to pay counts against your account and can cost you the ability to bid here.
Everything you have bid on, won, or owe is on your Buying tab.
Free, and as many as you like. There is no listing fee, no approval queue and no limit. You set a starting price — the lowest we allow is £20 — and, if you want one, a reserve.
We give you a token. You publish it as a DNS TXT record on the domain, at your registrar or DNS provider, and we look it up. The exact record to add is shown on your Selling tab, in two forms so you can use whichever your provider allows.
Until that record resolves your listing is invisible to everyone but you and nobody can bid on it. Claiming a name does not reserve it — anyone can claim any domain, and the listing goes to whoever proves control first. A claim nobody proves is deleted after 14 days.
A verified listing has no closing date and no clock. It sits there indefinitely, costing nothing, until somebody bids. There is nothing for you to do at this stage.
You are told, and the lot is marked pending. Nobody else can bid on it while you decide.
You then have 7 days to pay £5 to open the auction. Paying moves the domain to Showcase, turns the bid into the opening bid, and starts a 7-day auction.
The £5 is not refundable — not if the domain fails to sell, not if your reserve is missed, not if the sale later falls through. Do not pay it unless you intend to sell.
If you do not pay, your account is closed. The bid is cancelled, the domain comes off the site, and your remaining unsold listings go with it. Listing a domain is an offer to sell it, and somebody has committed real money against that offer. Do not list anything you are not prepared to sell.
Bidding is by proxy and the clock extends on a late bid, exactly as described under Buying. You cannot bid on your own lot.
The buyer pays us, and we tell you once the money has arrived — do not start the transfer before that. You then move the domain, we confirm the change of ownership, and we pay you. Our commission is 5.0% of the final price on sales above £100, and nothing at or below that. It comes out of the money we are already holding, so there is nothing for you to pay us separately — and if the sale fails you owe us nothing, because we take it only from a completed sale.
The transfer must complete within 21 days of the close. If it does not, the buyer is refunded in full and you get nothing.
Nothing further is charged. The promotion fee is not returned, and you can list the domain again whenever you like.
| Listing a domain | free |
| Holding it, indefinitely | free |
| A bid you choose not to take forward | free |
| Opening the auction after a bid | £5, non-refundable |
| Selling above £100 | 5.0% commission |
| Selling at or below £100 | no commission |
