Can someone give some insight why so many high-profile companies use MarkMonitor? What exactly is so compelling about their domain registration services? Why is that even Internet juggernauts are unable to take care of domain name registration themselves? How much does it cost (they didn't seem to have a price list)?
We used MarkMonitor at Last.fm. It's probably best to think of them as an abstraction layer above the registrar level which handles any residual pain that might generate:
* They will register all TLDs. A lot of more obscure ccTLDs (e.g. Norway, Hong Kong, Argentina) require domains are registered with a local company. MarkMonitor will set the local presence up for you and charge you a fixed fee. Some other registrars support some of these TLDs but none support all of them, so otherwise you're split between registrars. If (for whatever reason) MarkMonitor can't register a domain themselves, they'll go as far as getting a credit card out and using another registrar who can.
* They invoice you: you don't have to worry about expired credit cards or any other payment problems. You get one invoice every month for all your domains. (If you've ever had to deal with submitting expenses receipts for 80 domain renewals, this is definitely a bonus. Now consider that most huge companies have tens of thousands of domains.)
* They handle the domain "sunrise" applications for you (this is apparently a big brand protection deal if you're a big company), so you'll regularly get emails saying "do you want to register the .xxx domains for all your brands?".
* They do SSL certificates as well, and they automatically get renewed and invoiced.
* You get an actual friendly human account manager to talk to.
I can't remember what their actual pricing is. The price per domain is perhaps 2-10x more than other registrars. I'm not sure if they charge a recurring fee.
A company would have to become an ICANN registrar to be able to register their own domains, in addition to having to setup registration agreements in every other country TLD that those companies do business in (google.co.uk, microsoft.ru, etc.). That would require a lot more money and overhead than just letting MarkMonitor do it, which specializes in this sort of thing.
I work at a consumer registrar, the only thing you need to do in order for us to hand over control of a domain to you is put a company logo on a word document, stamp it and fax it to us.
This does not apply to larger clients, but then if you're already looking for that kind of service it makes sense to go to a company that specialises in that.
I bet social engineering mark monitor is a lot harder than doing the same to even network solutions.
Now wikipedia is likely fine since EVERYONE knows it is important. But what about IBM's marketing campaign #249's 'desielenginesandyou.com'? If you were IBM would to trust registrar x's underpaid customer support?
I don't know exactly what MM does behind the scenes with regard to domains, but I expect having all aspects of overall trademark/brand management/protection under one roof helps. They're not just a domain registrar.
Unless Godaddy offers some service I'm not aware of, its probably just one of those things that happens when you're just getting started. You end up never changing it due to the work required.
Am I the only one disappointed by this move? They moved to a registrar so split between their role as registrar and their stance as anti-piracy that they couldn't even take a stand on SOPA?
