Organize and Manage Your Domain Name Portfolio
It’s important to keep a close eye on your domain names to make sure they aren’t about to expire or their nameservers haven’t been changed by mistake.
If you’ve registered all your domains through Namecheap, managing them is simple, and Namecheap will send you automatic reminders when it’s time to renew. If you’re a web developer, however, chances are your clients’ domains are spread far and wide across a number of different registrars.
Even if your clients keep track of domain renewals, a smart developer still needs to monitor those expiration dates. An expired domain means a website that doesn’t work. Your clients will appreciate you more if you keep track of this for them. And while you’re at it, it’s also a good idea to keep an eye on your clients’ nameservers to make sure they haven’t been accidentally changed.
We’ll look at a few services and software programs that make it easy to track and manage a large portfolio of domains, regardless of where they are registered.
Watch My Domains Pro
Watch My Domains from Domain Punch is a well-known, software-based solution for tracking domains. Use it to track expiration dates, nameserver, and ownership data in a simple dashboard that can be easily sorted.
Before Watch My Domains, people often used spreadsheets to track their domain names. This service eliminates that hassle, allowing users to download and parse data directly from Whois records. The drawback (compared to web-based solutions) is that that you must frequently download new Whois records to update the data. It also doesn’t alert you to sudden changes that you might overlook.
A trial version is free for 30 days with a one-time $49 license fee after that.
DomainIQ
DomainIQ is a simple web-based solution for monitoring domain names. Just input your domain names and select the alerts you want. You can track changes to expiration dates, domain status, Whois information, and other data.
Monitoring is just one service DomainIQ offers. A paid account ($24.95/month) also gives you access to Whois history (view old versions of name ownership records) and reverse Whois (see all of the domains owned by that person by entering a name or email address). Use reverse Whois to see if domains are registered in your name that you may have forgotten about. Account prices increase if you want to monitor more than 100 domains.
DomainTools
DomainTools is a powerful domain research and management tool used by some of the biggest companies around the world.
Like DomainIQ, it’s a web-based service that provides email alerts whenever something about your domains changes. A basic account is $99 and lets you monitor up to 1,000 domains.
Other features included with your subscription are Whois history and reverse Whois lookups.
The Simplest Option
If you’re just tracking your personal domains, having them all in one place will make it easy to keep an eye on them. You can inexpensively and easily transfer your domains from other registrars to Namecheap, of course, and then you might consider one of these helpful domain monitoring solutions.
I read your article. Its very interesting. I didn’t have any idea how to manage. I was looking for such sharing. Thank you very much.
Useful to the new entrants who wants to register a unique domain for their sites. Also many web hosts provide free domain registration service on choosing different hosting services.
Just saw this useful overview. I wish the “Simplest Option” would be easier to use. We would consolidate all domains with Namecheap, if they could be organized here, in groups. Folders or tags would help to keep track of domains and their billing used for separate clients or properties.Unfortunately, as it stands now, it’s easier to group them by keeping them at separate registrars