Premium Domains - Work flow

[FutureX]

I want to better understand how Premium Domains work.  I stumbled onto what could potentially be a huge problem for us registering new domain names.  Here's the flow:

• New client wants to register a new domain name
• They type in amazing.online
• We are reselling .online for about $50
• The search tool shows that amazing.online is available and will charge the client $50/year
• (I have the Premium Domains option turned on in Domain Pricing)
• I did a quick search of amazing.online on Google Domains and see that it is a Premium Domain and is selling for $5,400/year.   

As a reseller if the customer went forward with the purchase I would be on the hook for $5,400 from my registrar.  How does a reseller know if a domain is a Premium Domain to prevent this from happening?

FutureX

[WHMCS John]

Hi @FutureX

The Lookup Provider detects whether a domain is considered Premium and returns the corresponding price for display on the checker page. This typically varies between each registrar, therefore we recommend selecting your domain registrar as the Lookup Provider: https://docs.whmcs.com/Domain_Pricing#Lookup_Provider

In the event of an inaccurate result allowing an order to be placed, the actual registration would fail as the Register command would not contain the necessary premium pricing variables. You could then cancel the order and refund the customer.

 

[Remitur]

1 hour ago, WHMCS John said:

The Lookup Provider detects whether a domain is considered Premium and returns the corresponding price for display on the checker page. This typically varies between each registrar, therefore we recommend selecting your domain registrar as the Lookup Provider: https://docs.whmcs.com/Domain_Pricing#Lookup_Provider

Beware: WHMCS namespinner does not manage Premium Domains, so if you set Premium Domain option ON, you must not use Namespinner, and if you use Namespinner you must not set on Premium Domain option.
(This is not written anywhere in WHMCS's docs)

 

1 hour ago, WHMCS John said:

In the event of an inaccurate result allowing an order to be placed, the actual registration would fail as the Register command would not contain the necessary premium pricing variables. You could then cancel the order and refund the customer.

Not for every registrar: Resellerclub has the very same call both for ordinary and premium domains (yes, in resellerclub's docs it's written differently, but it's wrong).
If you issue an ordinary API "registerdomain" command to Resellerclub for a Premium domain, the domain will be regularly registered, and you will be charged the Premium fee.
No reimbursement possible from Resellerclub, because with Resellerclub you're always wrong, and it's always your fault.

 

[FutureX]

@Remitur Thanks for the info!  I'm using GoDaddy and they do not show up in the Lookup Provider>Domain Registrar section so I can't select them (GoDaddy).

In this case would I just turn off Premium Domains since it seems GoDaddy cannot/will not provide Premium Domain pricing over the WHCMS API?

Thanks!

[Remitur]

2 minutes ago, FutureX said:

In this case would I just turn off Premium Domains since it seems GoDaddy cannot/will not provide Premium Domain pricing over the WHCMS API?

I have no experience with Godaddy module, but if they have no lookup service with premium domain management, I guess it's better to give up about Premium Domains.

Maybe you could try using another provider (that manages Premium domains) just for lookup, and then register on Godaddy... but try this in a sandbox before going live...

I don't know if and how Premium domains are supported in Godaddy Registrar Module: with Resellerclub it's a mess (you need a third-party add-on, and customizations of .tpl files...)

 

[FutureX]

@Remitur OK great, thanks for the info!

[FutureX]

I just download the GoDaddy Registrar Module from ModulesGarden to see if it would detect and return the correct Premium Domain price.  It does not.  Searching for "amazing.online" in the WHMCS domain checker tool only returned the price I set for the .online TLD.

If I use the GoDaddy API domain checker for example amazing.online returns this:

}
"available": true,
  "currency": "USD",
  "definitive": true,
  "domain": "amazing.online",
  "period": 1,
  "price": 4224990000
}

$4224.99 obviously a premium domain but programmatically you'd never know.  Also the ModulesGarden GoDaddy module enables GoDaddy to be a Lookup provider and so should be returning the current correct price upon searching.  It does not.  It only shows you the price that I've entered into the Domain pricing for that TLD. 

I also contacted API@godaddy.com and their tech said it would indeed register as a premium domain if I sent it through and I'd have to pay the $4224.99.  

How do we solve this??  Is the solution that you can ONLY use ResellerClub? Doesn't make sense to me

Why can't WHMCS pull the returned price from GoDaddy and use that to bill the customer?  Otherwise you're dead in the water.

 

Just for reference here is the 'normal' price for a non-premium domain:

{
  "available": true,
  "currency": "USD",
  "definitive": true,
  "domain": "amazings12344.online",
  "period": 1,
  "price": 32490000
}

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by FutureX

[FutureX]

Tech support at GoDaddy confirmed that they do not set the 'Premium' flag and so the only way to know if the domain is 'Premium' or not is to compare it to the base price.  Which also means I would get charged for the $4224.99 if someone tried to purchase that domain.  I wrote a little script to search for a domain.tld via GoDaddy's API and return the availability/price.   I can compare that to the base price and determine if it's 'Premium'

My question is, can I set the 'Premium' flag with the Premium price in WHMCS?

GoDaddy tech support did say that they do get a lot of requests to include the 'Premium' flag and they are "looking into adding this feature to the API at a later date."

[Remitur]

13 minutes ago, FutureX said:

My question is, can I set the 'Premium' flag with the Premium price in WHMCS?

Yes, you can: there's just a single field in tbldomains that shows if a domain is premium or not... nit this is useful just for renewals, because it works only after a domain has been inserted in tbldomains, that's to say after it has been ordered.

To manage the order as Premium, I guess you should code in cart, identifying a domain as Premium, correcting the price, and explaining to the customer that he's going to register a Premium domain...

BTW: also Hexonet manages premium domains:  https://centralnic-reseller.github.io/centralnic-reseller/docs/hexonet/whmcs/whmcs-ispapi-registrar/

[FutureX]

Great thanks for the info! 

My idea was really to keep the Premium Domains from auto-registering but at the same time be available to the customer.  So on the first search by the user if it came up as Premium I would inform the user of the price and they would have to email me to confirm and once their payment cleared I'd  register the domain manually.  I don't want to have $10,000 sitting in my registrar account just yet. 

Now I have to get smart about not letting a Premium domain go through the cart. 

Thanks for the referral to Hexonet!

[yggdrasil]

To be honest I would not bother at all with premium domain names. The chances are someone registering a premium domain with your site are slim to none, because they already know it's a premium domain name and will try to find the best matching pricing which is most likely not coming from someone reselling it.

It's likely someone registering a premium domain from my experience, is a fraudulent order, they are just using stolen cards as such they don't care for the price, but you will be on the hook for the whole cost of the domain. The risk is too high not to mention all the issues and problems with WHMCS handling premium domain names. Even if the order is legit, in my experience, the price is wrong and people registering it do it because they realize the glitch in your WHMCS installation. Its way to messy and financially risky.

As a side note, premium domain names are actually registered domain names. Technically its incorrect to show them as free and available and when they are not. This was a huge * by the ICANN that allowed new domain registrars to basically register all dictionary names for their own profit. Morally offering premium domain goes against how the Internet was build. If you register a .com, the cost is the same for every name, regardless of how it looks or sounds, this was always true for every domain name, even country domain names until 1000+ new shady names where approved. Someone should not be paying a higher cost because they got a nicer looking name. And the premium thing is such a disaster that some registries even show premium domain was being free and with the standard prices on their Whois databases which is also completely misleading and false as they are not.

This is why software like WHMCS has troubles with premium domain names as well, because the ICANN allowed everyone to do whatever they want the new names and there is no standard way to deal with it, WHMCS basically relies on whatever API's a registrar is providing and some distinguish premium domain names, others not. Most just show them as registered (correctly so).

Unless you have a very dedicated public that will only buy premium domain names, it's not worth to even confuse your customers. The best is just to disable premium domain names and show them as registered because that is actually what they are, registered domain names that are selling above the standard public pricing. The thing is such as mess that some premium domain names are not only higher on the registration price but also on the renewal. This is something you have to take into account with whatever module you are using.  Some premium domain names are different on the renewal price even for the same TLD name. That means

something.amazing  could cost $500 for registration but $99 for each year renewal

But 

something2.amazing could cost $180 per year on each renewal.

How in the world are you going to handle this? I don't think any module has per individual domain name price. So, your module not only has to get the premium registration price but also its renewal and its unique renewal per registered domain name. If you don't believe me, please research this first, because the ICANN allowed registrars to do whatever they want with premium domain names. Most of them are failing and some realized it's not working so most of them are now only expensive on registration but with a normal renewal price, but that does not mean they can change it again tomorrow.

Premium domains changed its pricing structure many times already in the past years. Depending on the extension, some have a completely different pricing strategy, the nicer the domain name the more expensive its renewal, but then less nice premium domain names in the same extension cost less each year. That means you have many, but many different pricing levels on the same extensions depending on the type of premium domain name.

It's also a legal mess in case you have premium domain customers. How are you going to explain your customer that his premium domain name which costs 99$ a year per renewal, now suddenly will cost $1000 a year.

I don't want to be dramatic, but the registries offering premium domain names can even do that, they can suddenly jack up the pricing if your domain name or website is suddenly very popular just because they need more money.

This is probably the main reason nobody is using the new extensions for any serious project. While I don't know any specific case about this, the fact you are using a premium domain means your pricing is not the same as everyone else and there are little to no rules because the ICANN wanted money and basically was bribed to approve as many names as they could. This means you don't even have the same legal or standard protections as with names like .com, .net, etc.

I hope everyone reading this, notices how messy and complicate it is to actually offer premium domain names if you have to take into account all potentially scenarios.

Edited September 16, 2022 by yggdrasil

[FutureX]

Hi @yggdrasil,

Thank you very much for the fantastic info on Premium Domians.  I couldn't agree with you more.  When I started diving into this I quickly realize what mess it was and the huge potential for very expensive mistakes.  In my testing of Enom, ResellerClub and GoDaddy only ResellerClub showed the Premium Domains as not available when I switched them off in WHMCS, the other registrars showed them as available so I'm going with ResellerClub for now.  That was my biggest concern as you pointed out, being burned on a very wrong price and the fraud and corruption involved.

GoDaddy by far has the best prices but they do not flag Premium Domains so you'd have to check every one against the 'normal' price.  To me the best/safest move for WHMCS is to use the registrar's APIs to check the pricing in realtime instead of hard coding them because the prices change all the time.

 

Thanks! FutureX

[RadWebHosting]

Most premium domains are given this delegation by the Registries, I believe. They should add some flag in response so we can scrape the Premium status from WHOIS!

[yggdrasil]

6 hours ago, radwebhosting said:

Most premium domains are given this delegation by the Registries, I believe. They should add some flag in response so we can scrape the Premium status from WHOIS!

They should but many don't and the Whois result in some of them is as registered, and others as available depending on the registry running the premium extension. It's very inconsistent as there are no set rules.

[PapaKai]

Hey @FutureX

Let me reply here regarding premium domain names and how this works in WHMCS. Showing up the design issues of WHMCS itself with the premium domain integration as well.
(I am the Dep. Lead / Lead Dev. of the HEXONET ispapi registrar module, not the one that is shipped with WHMCS!)

So, basically, you already received very good input here. Thanks @Remitur for having us mentioned as Premium Domain Provider - very appreciated!
The best idea is always to use your Registrar of Choice also for availability checks - independent of the premium domain topic. This ensures that the availability shown reflects to possibility to order or not.
Sometimes a domain is shown as available at Registrar A (the configured lookup provider), but isn't then for some reason available on Registrar B (your configured TLD Provider).
I would find it better, if the lookup would be done in general by relying on the availability check integration of the TLD Provider - but that's just my opinion.

Premium Domain Names are rarely well supported by registrar integrations. The reasons: the demand for premiums is not that high and as of bugs / issues in either the registrar integrations or in whmcs core related to premium domains, people stop business with premiums soon or are keeping it disabled anyway.
It took years until WHMCS patched my reported bug with Premium Domain Transfers where the regular price was used on shopping cart level and not the one shown up in search results. WHMCS Core itself looks stable regarding premiums now, but there are still design issues...

In tbldomains, there's a single field is_premium or so that is then 1 or 0 and is telling whmcs that the domain is premium or not. in tbldomains_extra, you'll find entries related to the registrar registration price, registrar renewal price and registrar currency of the underlying premium domain(s).
... and this is where it is getting weird for domain registrars: There's no WHMCS Core built-in possibility to get this price updated and we had to build our own tooling for either adding missing parts or adding the full set of that premium pricing data.
Partially missing/incomplete data was a result of a WHMCS Core Bug (they missed adding the premium renewal price to DB). This bug got patched some time ago, but patching missing data is of other's responsibility. But that's about an old bug, not of interest if you're freshly starting with premiums.

But what if the registry provider decides to switch regular domain names to premiums, or if prices change on registry level? Yes, no solution available in WHMCS for automatically adding the missing premium pricing data or updating existing pricing data.
We had a customer with ~1k .xxx domain names that got switched to premium and we spent a lot time on our end with helping them and thanks to our tooling, we have a way now for this.
You may upvote this feature request: https://requests.whmcs.com/idea/domain-synchronization-process-premium-domain-names

If you want to offer Premium Domains, let me point to us, we have huge experience with them in WHMCS. Search for the ispapi whmcs registrar module and you'll be able to find the github repo.
You may reach out to our Sales Dep. regarding prices. Prices depend always on the volume, so prices we show in public are probably not matching your situation.

Hopefully people start upvoting the above feature request to make the premium domain integration of whmcs a better experience.

Enjoy / HTH

Kai

[FutureX]

@PapaKaiThanks for the great info!  Yes this is an area of craziness and potential financial ruin if done wrong!  

[Remitur]

I've just realized another WHMCS issue in premium domain management.

Further details: