Dan.com alternative: what to use now that Dan is gone

What happened to Dan.com?

GoDaddy shut Dan.com down on 27 June 2025 and folded it into Afternic. The brand redirects to Afternic, and ns1.dan.com now answers from a GoDaddy IP block. So if your domain is still delegated to Dan’s nameservers, it is parked on Afternic’s infrastructure now, not on the service you chose.

Dan was the closest thing Europe had to a homegrown marketplace: Amsterdam based, with a commission in the 9–15% range (25% if the domain’s nameservers were pointed somewhere else), payments running on Adyen, and its own escrow step between buyer and seller. It was not a licensed escrow provider itself; like every platform in this trade, it sequenced the money and the transfer so that neither side had to trust the other.

What did Dan.com do well?

Two things, worth naming before we suggest a replacement. Dan had a clean lander and a checkout that people finished, and after the shutdown sellers on NamePros described Afternic as a step down in both interface and support. Dan also solved the hard part: it held the buyer’s money until the domain demonstrably changed hands.

A lead-only tool does not replace that second half. It is a different job. This page tells you plainly which half nics.dev does.

Is there a like-for-like Dan.com replacement?

No. The choice has split in two. You can take another marketplace, Afternic or Sedo while its sale is pending, and accept a commission and their page in exchange for their distribution. Or you can take a page you own and handle the buyer yourself. nics.dev is the second kind. It is a for-sale page service, not a marketplace: no listings feed, no buyer-side search, no cut of the sale.

How does nics.dev compare with Dan.com?

	Dan.com (until June 2025)	nics.dev
Commission	9–15%, 25% if nameservers were elsewhere	None while in beta
Ads on the lander	None, since it was a marketplace listing page	None, ever
Who owns the buyer relationship	The marketplace; the thread lived there	You. Offers arrive as a thread on your own page, relayed so your address stays private
EU hosting and GDPR	Amsterdam-based	EU-hosted; visitor IPs hashed with a daily salt, no cookies on landers
Escrow / held funds	Built in, on Adyen	Not held by us, ever. We hand the deal to a third-party escrow service and record the state
Syndication to registrars	Through the GoDaddy/Afternic network after the merger	Not yet. There is no registrar network behind nics.dev
Visitor stats	Marketplace analytics	Per-domain, classified human versus bot before you see the number
Status	Gone	Free while in beta

What should I do with a domain still pointing at ns1.dan.com?

Move it. A delegation you did not choose is a delegation you cannot fix when something breaks. You have no account on the machine answering for your domain. Point the nameservers at whichever service you actually want, including your registrar’s own DNS if you want the domain to go quiet for a while.

How do I move to nics.dev in an afternoon?

1. Export your list. Any marketplace or spreadsheet will do; all that is needed is the domain names.
2. Add them in the portal, one at a time or as a pasted list.
3. Point the nameservers at ns1.nics.dev and ns2.nics.dev at your registrar. Nothing else moves: the domain stays in your account, in your name, on your card.
4. Wait for the check. We resolve the parent nameservers every few minutes; when they show our two names the listing flips to active and a certificate is issued for the domain and its www name.
5. Nothing else. Existing MX and TXT records are carried into the zone we serve, so mail, SPF and every verification record survive the move.

If you change your mind, point the nameservers back and the page stops resolving within the hour.

What nics.dev does not do yet

No payments, no held funds and no lease-to-own. No syndication to registrar networks, which is the one thing a marketplace genuinely gives you. No buyer-side search, because that would make this a marketplace. If what you liked about Dan was the distribution, a marketplace is still the honest answer.

Questions

Is Dan.com coming back?

No. GoDaddy shut it on 27 June 2025 and folded the business into Afternic. The brand now points at Afternic and Dan's nameservers answer from a GoDaddy IP block.

Do I have to use Afternic now?

No. Afternic is where Dan's listings went, not where your domains have to live. A domain only sits with a service for as long as its nameservers point there, and you can change that in a few minutes at your registrar.

Will I lose my email if I move the nameservers to nics.dev?

No. Your MX and TXT records are copied into the zone we serve for the domain, and you can edit A, AAAA, CNAME, TXT, MX, SRV and CAA records in the portal at any time.

What does nics.dev cost compared with Dan's commission?

nics.dev is free while it is in beta: no card, no per-domain fee and no commission on a sale. Dan charged a commission per sale, and Afternic still does.