Efty alternative: no subscription, no commission while in beta

What is Efty, and is it still shipping?

Efty is an Amsterdam-based subscription tool for domain sellers: branded for-sale pages, an inventory dashboard, and Efty Pay for the checkout. It is the one healthy European player left standing after Dan.com closed and IONOS put Sedo up for sale, and it ships roughly monthly: Efty Pay in 2024, a new investor interface in October 2025, lease-to-own in February 2026, lead scoring in March 2026, a distribution network in June 2026, a rebuilt site in July 2026.

Every one of those is on the payments and distribution side. Efty Pay volume grew 283% in 2025, and 36% of it now flows through their partner API for other platforms. Efty is becoming payment infrastructure, a reasonable business, just not the same business as the lander.

What has stood still?

The seller-facing page. Measured in August 2026, an Efty lander ships roughly 2 MB of JavaScript and CSS, loads Font Awesome twice, and runs jQuery 3.5.1 and a beta build of Bootstrap 5 behind a theme file dated November 2022. It is served with Cache-Control: no-store and no CDN, with a single lang and a single currency. The lease-to-own modal still asks buyers to accept the Dan.com terms, and that link now redirects to Afternic.

The analytics are a 30-day visitor count per domain, updated hourly, with no geography, no referrers, no trend and no conversion rate; Efty’s own blog suggests using Google Analytics. Bot filtering is not something a seller can verify. And there are no webhooks, no team seats even on the top plan, CSV import only, Zapier from $49 a month, and removal of Efty branding from $89 a month.

How does nics.dev compare with Efty?

	Efty	nics.dev
Price	Subscription, $22 for 50 domains to $249 for 25,000, up 20–40% since 2024	Free while in beta. No card, no per-domain fee
Commission	5% through Efty Pay, 12.5% if nameservers point elsewhere	None while in beta
Ads on the lander	None	None, ever
Page weight	~2 MB of JavaScript and CSS, no CDN	One HTML document with one inline stylesheet, no third-party scripts, behind a CDN
Languages	English lang, single currency	Per-domain language (English, Dutch, German), set by the seller
Who owns the buyer relationship	The seller, through Efty’s page	The seller. Offers arrive as a thread you own, relayed so your address stays private
Analytics	30-day visitor count per domain, hourly; no geo, referrers or trend	Per-domain, classified human versus bot, with referrer split and country
DNS	One zone per domain; your MX and TXT records are kept	One zone per domain; your MX and TXT records are kept and stay editable
HTTPS	Let’s Encrypt after propagation, up to 48 hours without TLS; slow issuance reported in 2025	Free certificate per domain and its www name, issued automatically after delegation
Portfolio health	No delegation or certificate monitoring	Nameserver drift, stuck certificates and traffic spikes are checked and mailed
Payments	Efty Pay, plus a partner API used by other platforms	None. We never hold funds; a deal is handed to a third-party escrow service
Public API	No seller API, no webhooks, CSV import only	Not yet public
Branding removal	From $89 a month	Not sold. A small “hosted by nics.dev” line, opt-out per seller

Where Efty is genuinely ahead

Payments. Efty Pay is a working, regulated checkout that has moved real volume, and lease-to-own on top of it. nics.dev holds no money at all: it introduces buyer and seller, keeps the thread, and hands the close to a third-party escrow service. If you want one bill and one dashboard for listing, checkout and payout, that is Efty’s product and not ours.

Efty also has a distribution network and lead scoring. We have neither.

How do I move over in an afternoon?

1. Export your inventory. Efty’s CSV export is fine as a starting list.
2. Copy your DNS records first. Both services host per-domain zones, so note any MX, TXT, A or CNAME records you rely on and add them in the portal before switching.
3. Add the domains in the portal, one at a time or as a pasted list.
4. Point the nameservers at ns1.nics.dev and ns2.nics.dev.
5. Wait for the check. We resolve the parent nameservers every few minutes, then the page goes live and a certificate is issued.

Then cancel the subscription, which Efty asks you to do by emailing support.

Questions

What does Efty cost?

Our research recorded a subscription from $22 for 50 domains up to $249 for 25,000, plus 5% on sales through Efty Pay (12.5% if the domain's nameservers point elsewhere), with prices up 20–40% since 2024. nics.dev is free while it is in beta, with no subscription and no commission.

Is Efty a bad product?

No. It is the healthiest independent player left in Europe and it ships regularly: Efty Pay, lease-to-own, lead scoring, a distribution network. The investment is going into the payments side; the seller-facing lander is where it has stood still.

Does nics.dev have an API?

Not a public one yet. The portal has a session-authenticated API behind it that the seller app uses, but it is not documented or supported for third parties.

Can I keep my mail if I move from Efty to nics.dev?

Yes. Both services run one DNS zone per domain rather than a catch-all, so both can host your MX and TXT records. Copy them into the portal before you switch the nameservers and nothing goes dark.