Domain Portfolio Management: Getting Organized

Step one is always the same: make a list of everything you own. This sounds obvious, but for anyone with domains across multiple registrars or years of accumulation, it's not as simple as it sounds.

Start with your registrar accounts

Log into every registrar where you might have domains. Check GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains (now Squarespace), Cloudflare, your hosting provider's domain service—anywhere you might have registered something. Export each list.

Search your email

Search for "domain registration" and "domain renewal" in your email. You'll probably find registrations you'd forgotten about. Add any missing domains to your list.

Create a master inventory

For each domain, track at minimum: the domain name, which registrar holds it, when it expires, and what it's for (active site, parked, defensive registration, etc.). A spreadsheet works fine for small portfolios. Dedicated tools help as you scale.

Consolidate where possible

Having domains spread across five registrars means five accounts to manage, five places to update payment information, five potential points of failure. Consider transferring to one or two primary registrars. The transfer fees pay for themselves in reduced management overhead.

Expired domains are lost domains. Auto-renewal helps, but it's not foolproof. Credit cards expire. Payment methods get removed. Registrar accounts get hacked. Relying solely on auto-renewal is like driving without a seatbelt because you have airbags.

Enable auto-renewal, but don't trust it blindly

Yes, turn on auto-renewal for every domain you care about. But also set up separate notifications so you know when renewals should happen. If your auto-renewal fails silently, you want to catch it before the grace period ends.

Use multiple notification methods

Registrar emails sometimes go to spam. Use a monitoring tool that sends alerts through a different channel—push notifications, a different email address, or webhook integrations with tools you actually check.

Keep payment information current

When you get a new credit card, update it at your registrars before the old one expires. Set a calendar reminder when your card is 3 months from expiration. This is boring administrative work that saves you from losing important domains.

Review your portfolio quarterly

Set a recurring calendar reminder to review your domains every quarter. Check that everything's set to auto-renew, payment methods are current, and contact information is accurate. Fifteen minutes of prevention beats weeks of recovery.

Every domain renewal is a decision, even if it doesn't feel like one. Most people just auto-renew everything and let the clutter accumulate. But periodic pruning keeps your portfolio focused and your costs reasonable.

Domains worth keeping:

• Anything actively used for a live website or email
• Your main brand and its critical variations
• Domains that would be genuinely damaging if someone else owned them
• Investment domains with clear resale potential or existing traffic

Candidates for dropping:

• Project ideas you've abandoned with no plans to revisit
• Defensive registrations for brands you no longer operate
• Speculative purchases that haven't appreciated in years
• Typos and variations nobody would actually type

The "one year test"

For each questionable domain, ask: "If I let this expire and someone else registered it tomorrow, would I care in a year?" If the honest answer is no, that domain is probably not worth the renewal fee. Let it go and put that money toward something that matters.

Dropping domains feels wasteful—you already spent money on them. But that's sunk cost thinking. The question isn't what you've spent; it's whether future spending is worthwhile. Sometimes the smartest move is to cut your losses.

Domain valuation is more art than science, but some principles are consistent. Knowing roughly what your domains might be worth helps you make better keep-or-drop decisions and negotiate sales if opportunities arise.

Factors that increase value:

• Length: Shorter is generally better. Single-word .coms are premium.
• Extension: .com still commands the highest prices for most use cases.
• Keywords: Domains containing valuable search terms have more commercial appeal.
• Brandability: Made-up words that sound good can be worth more than descriptive terms.
• Existing traffic: Domains that already get search traffic have provable value.
• Clean history: Domains without spam or penalty history are worth more.

Factors that decrease value:

• Hyphens, numbers, or difficult spellings
• Very long names or multiple words
• Niche TLDs with limited market recognition
• Past use for spam, malware, or other problematic content
• Trademark issues that limit who can legally use the domain

For rough valuations, look at comparable sales on platforms like NameBio or recent auctions. What did similar domains actually sell for? That's more useful than any automated valuation tool, which tend to be optimistic to the point of fantasy.

A spreadsheet works for small portfolios, but it requires manual updates and doesn't help you when domains approach expiration. As your portfolio grows, tools that actively track and notify you become essential.

shadom.co helps with the monitoring side. Add your domains—whether you own them or you're watching them for acquisition—and get notified when statuses change. Track expirations across registrars from one dashboard. Know when something needs attention before it becomes urgent.

The goal is to spend less time on administrative overhead and more time on decisions that actually matter: which domains to acquire, which to develop, and which to let go.