Dynadot Applies Engineering Expertise to Create Streamlined Tools for Domain Name Registrations and Management, Hosting & Design

TL; DR: Using custom-built domain, hosting, and website building software, Dynadot helps a wide range of customers build an online presence. From first-time site owners to large-scale domain investors, the company emphasizes affordability, usability, and transparency. Dynadot now serves thousands of customers from more than 100 countries — and is poised to increase its global presence through offices in China and a robust portfolio of new gTLDs.

Although many businesses encompass both websites and brick-and-mortar facilities, a growing number of companies are born and operate exclusively online. Given the relative ease of creating a website, these businesses run the gamut from small-town entrepreneurs and tech startups to large, globally-operated enterprises.

With domains, hosting, and site management solutions all under one roof, Dynadot makes getting online easy and simplifies operations and expenses for businesses of any size and industry. Founder Todd Han instilled his software engineering background in the company’s culture, ensuring the in-house tools and platforms are robust, user-friendly, and nimble.

The company’s extensive domain marketplace is especially helpful for domain investors, or those looking to sell flipped domains for profit. According to Marketing Specialist Barry Coughlan, Dynadot’s customer base is an even mix of site owners and those interested in buying and selling premium domain names.

“The company was built in a way that emphasizes design and technology,” he said. “By using tech to make things work smarter and faster, we’ve attracted a pretty robust investor crowd that loves our interface and control panel. Building these tools helps us keep our prices low and pass those savings onto the customers.”

Before Dynadot engineered its own software solutions, Todd attempted to build a website for a timeshare his mother owned. With Han realizing firsthand how tedious code-based website creation could be, he decided it was time for a change in the way hosting providers should approach the entire process.

“He found the process very laborious and unintuitive,” Barry said. “By trade, he sees problems and has to fix them. Since the beginning, our general guiding force for what we do encompasses what problem we’re trying to fix, how we can fix it, and how it will help our customers.”

Todd started Dynadot in his garage in Silicon Valley in 2002, and Barry said Todd remains actively involved in the company’s software innovations after more than 15 years.

“Having our own products and our own infrastructure means we can mold and edit as we see fit,” Barry said. “That makes processes and tools much faster and easier, and that has always been an important aspect of our company.”

With the focus on engineering and design, Dynadot developers write the domain and hosting software to be fast, reliable, and user-friendly. This approach, along with the company’s transparent and competitive pricing model, has attracted clients from several markets, including retail and domain reselling.

Featuring a built-from-scratch website builder, control panel, and domain marketplace, Dynadot’s goal is to streamline the process of achieving and maintaining online business success. The company’s control panel was the first to be built, Barry said, and has seen extensive updates over the years — including a complete redesign that launched in January.

“That was based on a lot of the small things we’ve wanted to update over the years but also on feedback from our customers,” he said. “We have a pretty good cadence with our investor crowd, and we engage with everyone a lot to inquire about what they need from the tools to help them work better.”

Among Dynadot’s most popular software solutions is its site builder, engineered in-house for maximum ease of use and flexibility. The platform’s drag-and-drop user interface features customizable fonts, colors, page configurations and more. In addition, SEO and social media tools make for easier — and therefore more profitable — marketing. Inline code editing also allows users to make changes with just a few simple clicks, adding forms, blog posts, and social media buttons to their sites.

“We’re not under the impression that we’re competing with Wix or Squarespace, by any means, but it’s a very competitively priced product offered as sort of an add-on product for our customer base,” Barry said. “Customers can bundle all these things together, control everything from the control panel, and make things much easier for themselves.”

By using homegrown software, rather than white-labeled products, Dynadot is able to deliver timely updates that address customer concerns. According to Barry, even the company’s email system was built from scratch.

“After a while, it just started to make sense,” he said. “Having that level of control and not having to pay a middleman makes decisions happen much quicker, and it allows us a lot more freedom to do what we need to.”

Dynadot’s site management tools are the perfect complement to its hosting and domain registration offerings, consolidating the site creation process into a single package. All hosting is provided via dedicated VPS servers powered by Intel Xeon CPUs, built for power on a budget.

With VPS hosting plans, users get a regular IP address as well as a dedicated IPv6 address, along with easy WordPress installation and full root access. In addition to 99.9% uptime, Dynadot’s virtual servers run on RAID-10 storage, allowing for a highly fault-tolerant infrastructure. The company also offers SSL certificates with 256-bit encryption and 99% browser recognition, allowing for secure transactions that keep data safe and increase brand reputation.

Barry credits the company’s customer service teams with linking customers with the people who can adapt the tools that ultimately help them build success online.

“They’re really good with synthesizing the feedback and passing it along to our product marketing and engineering teams,” he said. “They’re the real connectors between our client base and the people who are actually building these tools. We don’t want our products to get stale or work against the goals of our customers.”

As one of few ICANN accredited registrars, Dynadot is the industry’s global leader, with worldwide customers in 108 countries — and counting. The San Mateo-based company opened its first international office in 2011 in Beijing, followed by one in Zhengzhou, China, in 2013 and a Toronto office in 2015.

“The pan-Pacific nations, in South Asia in particular, have really taken on a life of their own,” Barry said. “I think as we start to see more nations gain more of a robust digital literacy, then, naturally, a lot of technology is going to follow that. Part of that rise is in domain registrations and investments.”

With the arrival of new generic top-level domains, Dynadot’s portfolio expanded from 35 gTLDs to more than 500 within a few years. With the move to China, the company began offering .CN domains.

“Our Chinese offices are more in tune with what our Chinese customers are interested in, especially from the TLD angle,” Barry continues. “That can change from country to country, so there’s a benefit to having people locally who can go to events and meet with investors over there face to face.”

The rapid market expansion introduced many new challenges, Barry said, as the company seeks to inform prospective domain owners in an essentially deregulated market.

“It introduces that level of competitiveness into an industry that already has to work hard to educate customers and create awareness,” he said. “Keeping an eye on underserved markets is key to any registrar, of course, but we want to make sure we offer the same sort of customer experience no matter where they come from. We want to speak the language of our customers.”