alpha
21st July 2009, 08:26 AM
The following email was sent today to all IDNtools registered members, and a link to the same put up on IDNtools..
Thank you for your interest in IDNtools.
Over the past few years traffic to the droplist features has increased to such a demand that we are unable to continue providing this service free of charge; therefore commencing from August 1st access to the droplists will no longer be freely available.
To access the droplists a subscription fee of $20/month will be charged.
This fee allows further development of the droplists and IDNtools in general and will ultimately improve your user experience.
In due time, there will be the option to subscribe using paypal.
Please contact us if paypal is not a possible payment method for you.
Thank you for supporting IDNtools, and while we have been pleased to provide this service free of charge for several years now, we hope you will understand that we have no option than to attempt to recover some of our spiralling costs.
Note, all other IDNtools features for the foreseeable future will continue to be freely available.
Thank you for your continued support.
I've been playing in the drop scene for a few years now, and as a I look at my portfolio - well over half of my gems have come from drops.
There is also a vibrant community of drop catchers active today, the recession has certainly taken it's toll, more and more domains are dropping and only the best domains seem to get a bid on Snapnames, whilst everything else slips through to then be fought over by drop catchers.
All of this means it's a busy life being a drop catcher, and tools such as the IDNtools drop list have taken a pounding recently - hence why we've had to either restrict its use or beef up the horsepower..
It's been free for a long time, and until very recently, used to be a laborious task to manually load the drop files in each day - so I think we've all had a good run.
There are other ways of course to scan the drops, the lists are available from Snapnames, but unless you have a slick process it is cumbersome to filter, convert, score and sort each day.
Anyway.. just wanted to put some perspective around the decision to start charging. I think IDNtools could be so much more, and would benefit from a makeover. All of this takes time & money - so hopefully if enough people subscribe, I will commit to hiring someone to make a good tool great.
Thank you for your interest in IDNtools.
Over the past few years traffic to the droplist features has increased to such a demand that we are unable to continue providing this service free of charge; therefore commencing from August 1st access to the droplists will no longer be freely available.
To access the droplists a subscription fee of $20/month will be charged.
This fee allows further development of the droplists and IDNtools in general and will ultimately improve your user experience.
In due time, there will be the option to subscribe using paypal.
Please contact us if paypal is not a possible payment method for you.
Thank you for supporting IDNtools, and while we have been pleased to provide this service free of charge for several years now, we hope you will understand that we have no option than to attempt to recover some of our spiralling costs.
Note, all other IDNtools features for the foreseeable future will continue to be freely available.
Thank you for your continued support.
I've been playing in the drop scene for a few years now, and as a I look at my portfolio - well over half of my gems have come from drops.
There is also a vibrant community of drop catchers active today, the recession has certainly taken it's toll, more and more domains are dropping and only the best domains seem to get a bid on Snapnames, whilst everything else slips through to then be fought over by drop catchers.
All of this means it's a busy life being a drop catcher, and tools such as the IDNtools drop list have taken a pounding recently - hence why we've had to either restrict its use or beef up the horsepower..
It's been free for a long time, and until very recently, used to be a laborious task to manually load the drop files in each day - so I think we've all had a good run.
There are other ways of course to scan the drops, the lists are available from Snapnames, but unless you have a slick process it is cumbersome to filter, convert, score and sort each day.
Anyway.. just wanted to put some perspective around the decision to start charging. I think IDNtools could be so much more, and would benefit from a makeover. All of this takes time & money - so hopefully if enough people subscribe, I will commit to hiring someone to make a good tool great.