

Show HN: Fast and efficient domain checking tool - volodymyr_f
http://instantname.me/

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timdorr
Neat, but I like <http://domai.nr/> better because it shows interesting TLDs
that would make my domain be one word. For instance, it suggests tim.do/rr for
my username.

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volodymyr_f
Good, feature request received. :)

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wilfra
domainsbot has a great API for this - it's what all the big registrars use

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JoshTriplett
Very nice! Much like instantdomainsearch, but with much broader TLD coverage.

Your pricing for Gandi seems incorrect; for instance, Gandi charges
$15.50/year for .com domains, not $18.54.

Sad that this still points people at GoDaddy as the cheapest option; you get
what you pay for, and GoDaddy has numerous well-known problems (in their
policies on how they (don't) support you if they get a complaint, and in their
many distasteful actions as a company).

You might also consider doing the obvious domain hack searches, at least for
exact matches: if the term the user typed in ends with a valid TLD, drop that
suffix and search for that term with that TLD. For instance, for the term
"exampleio", since it ends in "io", show the result for "example.io" and label
it "domain hack" on the left (where you show the labels for "exact match",
"gTLD", and "ccTLD").

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volodymyr_f
Thank you for your feedback and the great idea about the domain hacks
implementation. :)

The prices are shown with the included taxes and ICANN fees, which all
registrars calculate a bit differently. I tried to make them as much
comparable as possible. The total price for .com domain at Gandi.net is indeed
18.54 (<https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/detail/com/>)

Which other registrars would you like to be included?

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JoshTriplett
That price only applies if you live in the EU and have to pay VAT. You don't
have to pay that price anywhere else in the world. And Gandi covers all the
relevant fees; the price they quote is what you actually pay them.

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volodymyr_f
You are right, I'll take that into account.

Maybe I was confused because the domain for this project was registered
through Gandi.net and I had to pay that tax as I currently live in the EU. :)

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mcobrien
"Last week I came back to this idea and realized that there are good
alternatives available, it should not be treated a reason to stop."

\- Awesome, I'm glad you decided to go ahead with this. This is a crowded
space but you've been able to make a useful tool with features other sites
don't have. Congrats!

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karl_gluck
Wow! Great work. If I had a request, it would be to support more exotic TLDs
and other registrars--but it's amazingly useful as-is. The price comparison is
killer; I had no idea I could register a .TV domain for 10 bucks. I'll
definitely be using this.

Is your VPS doing the DNS lookup, or is that client side? If it's done on your
server, I would suggest that the site preview feature could be made click-
activation rather than automatic. It's already pretty slow to load, and I
would be just as happy with a link to open an unavailable domain in a new
window. Basically, if the preview slows down the domain availability lookup, I
think it should be pushed to a lower priority.

Overall, very slick! Congrats on a successful side-project.

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volodymyr_f
Thank your for the detailed feedback!

You can get the availability for most of the known TLD if you specify the
fully qualified domain name in the input. I am going to tune the list of the
shown TLDs in order to have the most popular/interesting ones there.

Which registrars would you like to be added?

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pudo
Love the tool. Since the "Propose it" link doesn't seem to work for me, here's
a feature request: can you put the query in the hash fragment so that I can
paste this into an email or chat?

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volodymyr_f
Thanks for the great feature request! Will work on that.

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volodymyr_f
Hi Everyone,

This is a domain availability checking tool with a simple clean design, a
website preview for taken domains and a price comparison for the available
ones.

Some details about the used technologies are in my blog post at
<http://floreskul.name/post/introducing-instantname-me>. I would appreciate
any feedback. :)

Thanks

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jakerocheleau
I didn't expect this to work with so many TLDs, very cool! I haven't really
found anything like this before. I wish I had more constructive criticism, the
layout is clean and it just works so great. Maybe include a more customized
favicon? I'll definitely keep it bookmarked.

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volodymyr_f
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I forgot about the favicon, will add that. I am
glad you liked it.

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scott_karana
Amazing work, but why is GoDaddy always the top result? It's clearly not the
collation, since Gandhi inevitably is at the bottom.

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volodymyr_f
The domains are shown in a random (but fixed) order at the moment, but I think
it's better to sort them by price. Do you have any better criteria on your
mind?

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crisnoble
I particularly like the idea that it will preview the website on hover. I will
probably like it even more once it actually works!

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tlack
Cool (and really fast) tool! I'd love to talk to you on behalf of the .CO TLD
team.. can you drop me an email at tom+hn@go.co?

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volodymyr_f
Done

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jordn
Excellent! that's just replaced <http://instantdomainsearch.com/> for me (even
thought that seems a tad faster) thanks to the inclusion of .co.uk.

Only slight annoyance is that I have to scroll down to see all the TLDs, that
slows down the process a little.

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RKearney
It took me a few moments to realize the reason this service wasn't working at
all was because you use port 3000 to load the domain registration information.
Many firewalls, both in a corporate environment and at home, tend to block
things like this.

Perhaps you could reconsider this decision and use port 80.

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geargrinder
This is nice. I used it to discover that instantna.me is still available. You
should pick it up! :-)

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volodymyr_f
Wow, great advice.

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_puk
This is great. Came back explicitly to search and upvote as this was perfect
for that initial quick sanity check of url availability.

Currently US centric - would be nice to be able to select to see localised (UK
here) registrars and currency.

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yjyft846jh
Nice work, I would suggest expanding the range of ccTLDs though - as there are
so many, maybe put the available ones at the top of the ccTLD list to prevent
too much scrolling. I like the quick links to registrars at the side, very
handy.

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ics
Very handy! Here's another feature suggestion: include the renewal rate on
your price comparison. For example Namecheap does .co registration for ~$13
for the first year, but after renewal it's ~$22 (just did this yesterday).

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_yb
Looks good. 2 things I would add: \- automatically exit the "getting website
preview" on taking the mouse off the div. \- an X or some way to close the
website preview thing (once website preview loaded). Good luck!

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gburt
It appears to be buggy. It told me Internet.io, Business.mobi, Collect.fm and
others were available (they're not). It was making me very excited until I
learned it was mistaken quite regularly. :(

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volodymyr_f
I didn't want to make anyone upset with this tool.

The current version of the service is based on the DNS lookup, which is not
always accurate. The errors may happen when a domain does not have a name
server record specified or it is in the a redemption period.

The current version is an experiment that checks if such a tool can be useful
for people. All the received feedback will be used to improve it. Using more
reliable approach of domain availability checking for sure has the highest
priority.

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davidkatz
I like it, but I gotta say - a decent logo would take this a long way forward.
Can I volunteer to make something for free that's at least better than what
you have now?

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volodymyr_f
I would really appreciate that. You can email me at
volodymyr.floreskul+hn@gmail.com.

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jayp08
The interface is easy and simple to use. I was trying to search for a .in
domain and it is still looking for it after about a minute of hitting submit.

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zachlatta
<http://instantna.me/> would be a fantastic domain name for this website. And
it's not taken!

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perryh2
There seems to be some domain names that your tool indicates to be available,
but they can't actually be registered (eg. ao.io).

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namenotrequired
Loving it! I've sent you a few feature requests through your form, I hope it
helps you a bit :)

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alfg
Very easy, fast and useful. Thanks. Bookmarked.

Minor misspelling on the contact link.

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namenotrequired
What about domains that are registered but on sale?

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volodymyr_f
For now this tool does not help to find such domains, but it sounds like a
really nice feature to implement, thanks.

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marban
how do you deal with lookup quotas (if there are any)?

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volodymyr_f
Currently the domain check is done via simple DNS lookups. It's not the most
reliable way, but it's very fast. Although there is a small probability of
checking result errors, for the MVP I decided to stop with this solution.

I plan to apply for TLD Zone Access programs (like
[http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domai...](http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domain-name-services/registry-products/tld-zone-
access/index.xhtml?loc=en_US)) if this project gets a positive feedback. That
would help to keep things both fast and reliable.

