SaaS applications that serve agencies, entrepreneurs, and new-to-web businesses have a unique opportunity to sell domains to their users who need them. It should be a no-brainer to build this feature in, but it’s easier said than done. Reselling domains or becoming a registrar is fraught with legal and compliance complications that can quickly overtake focus on core development initiatives.
Now, in partnership with IONOS, Entri Sell enables SaaS applications to sell domains in-app to their users - and it’s as easy as copy, paste, QA.
Why becoming a registrar or reseller is out of the question
It used to be that if you wanted to sell domains to your users, you basically had three options:
Send them somewhere else to buy a domain
Go through the (very complicated) process of becoming a registrar
Sign up for a reseller program
Totally possible, but not totally doable - especially if you’re an early-stage company without the time and resources to become a registrar.
That leaves everyone but the heftiest SaaS companies with two options: send their hard-won users out of the app to buy a domain through a registrar, or participate in a reseller program.
But there are problems there too.
Becoming a reseller means becoming an extension of a registrar’s support team
Reseller programs are super appealing because they take the nightmarish complications of becoming a registrar off the table completely. There’s some development work to build a front-end that slows things down, but overall, the process of going live with domain selling is much easier here.
The problem lies post-launch, because selling domains can open up a Pandora's box of support problems.Â
Typically these programs are pay-to-play, which means your company is paying for the privilege of selling domains to your users, but then also managing the support burden that comes with it. The rules around domains are complex, and frankly, difficult to stay up to date with if you’re not a full-time expert. CcTLD regulations vary by country. Every organization has their own set of compliance requirements.
It’s a support burden that’s often better suited to a legal team than a technical support team, and if your team is unprepared, you could be walking into a hornet’s nest.
How is Entri Sell different?
Entri loves all things custom domains – it’s kind of what we do around here. But if there’s one thing we didn’t love about this space, it was that our customers were still dependent on registrars to create a holistic user experience.
Registrars that, often, were after the same customers they were.
That’s why Entri is thrilled to announce the launch of a new product, Entri Sell, an API for domain selling that takes your competitors out of the equation, and gives you a fully native domains experience from start to finish.
Free to use, instant revenue potential
The best thing about Sell? It’s 100% free to use. There are no long-term agreements, and no product bundling requirements – it really is that simple.
Entri pays the most competitive commissions in the industry, a flat rate per domain, no matter how obscure the TLD is. Earnings are instantaneous, and there’s zero-catch – just integrate and start watching the sales pour in.
Free, automatic DNS configuration for domains purchased through Entri Sell
Our flagship product, Entri Connect, is famous for its ability to automatically set up even the most complex DNS records for custom domains.
With Entri Sell, every domain your users purchase will be automatically configured post-purchase, in one seamless flow.
Insanely simple to implement
We’re a team led by engineers who don’t just love building custom domain solutions – we really love building solutions that don’t take up space on an already crowded product roadmap.
Entri Sell comes with a fully-built front-end UI that you can customize with your brand’s colors, font families, and logo – you can even fully remove all Entri branding.
Like all of our products, Entri Sell is super simple to integrate:
Tell your Entri Solutions Engineer which DNS records your team will be sending through for your users’ custom domains
Get your API secret from the Entri dashboard
Customize your configuration object with any Advanced Settings you want
Copy and paste your configuration object
QA + launch
Most Sell customers go live in less than a day once the onboarding process is complete. There’s no front-end to build, and the Entri modal is fully customizable.
All of the domain revenue, none of the support burden
Your team builds amazing experiences for your users – let us worry about the support burden for domain sales. Entri partnered with industry-leading experts at IONOS because we knew that only a specialized team could manage the complex compliance requirements around domain sales.
IONOS intentionally puts their branding on the checkout experience in Entri Sell, so that your users are clear: when they need domain purchase support, the IONOS team has their back.
Offer your users a free domain through Entri Sell
Want to add even more value to your platform for your users? Entri Sell makes it easy to offer your paying users a free domain. Adding this freebie has been shown to boost free trial to paid user conversion rates, and setup of this feature is as simple as filling out a form.
Sell domains to your users, without crowding your roadmap
Custom domains are user activation secret sauce – they get users invested in using your product, and are proven to improve user retention. But they’re also a deceptively complex feature to build around, and your product team probably has better things to do.
Entri makes easy-to-implement solutions for custom domains that take the dev work out of supporting domain white labeling, with an all-inclusive tech stack to support your user from purchase to connection.
To find out more about how you can integrate with Entri Sell, reach out to a member of our team to get started.