TurnCommerce

TurnCommerce, Inc. began operating and was incorporated on August 6, 2003, as a corporation based in Denver, Colorado.⁠[1]

The company says it has acquired premium domains since 2003 and describes its holdings as the world’s largest private domain portfolio.⁠[2]

HugeDomains.com LLC, the operating entity of HugeDomains, began operating as a limited liability company on January 3, 2011, with Jeffrey Reberry and Andrew Reberry listed as co-founders.⁠[3]

HugeDomains says its team began by buying domains for its own projects and later packaged a hand-selected portfolio into a website for sale; it describes itself as one of the largest aftermarket domain resellers in the world.⁠[4]

The registrar brand NameBright began operating on June 13, 2013, under the alternate name NameBright.com Inc.⁠[5]

NameBright, a registrar built over five years by the TurnCommerce team, which held more than one million domain names, opened to the public that day with text-message two-factor authentication, a record of domain changes and linked accounts with separable permissions; a .com cost $8.03 with prepaid funds, and the company planned to profit from add-on services.⁠[6]

Throughout November 2013 NameBright offered .com registrations for $4.99 ($4.58 with a funded account), with no per-customer limit and a cap of 100,000 domain names in total.⁠[7]

HugeDomains acquired austinpain.com in January 2013 and reached no deal with Austin Pain Associates, which had offered $6,000; after the practice won a UDRP complaint, HugeDomains sued in federal court in Colorado, seeking a declaration that its registration and use were lawful and an order stopping the transfer.⁠[8]

TurnCommerce gained 299 more registrar accreditations, for at least 452.⁠[9]

TurnCommerce launched Expire.com, a Dutch-auction platform selling 15 to 30 domains a day with initial inventory from HugeDomains; prices started at $500 and fell by $100 for each day a name went unsold. The site was briefly offline at launch, and two sales, at $300 and $100, were recorded that day.⁠[10]

DropCatch added 500 more registrar accreditations in December 2016.⁠[11]

ICANN ended fiscal 2017 with 2,989 accredited registrars and projected that about 750 would close over the following year because the drop-catching market was saturated; about two-thirds of registrars were estimated to be shell accreditations owned by three companies, TurnCommerce (DropCatch.com) among them.⁠[11]

Domain investor Elliot Silver wrote that TurnCommerce was operated by Jeff Reberry and Andrew Reberry and was closely held, with private financials, and that HugeDomains owned hundreds of thousands of domain names and offered payment plans. He argued that NameBright’s low renewal cost gave customers little reason to transfer out, while DropCatch’s private auctions had performed poorly in his tests.⁠[12]

Donuts planned to roll out DropZone, a service for handling expiring domains, across its more than 200 gTLDs, possibly with an access fee whose amount had not been disclosed.⁠[13]

TurnCommerce wrote to ICANN that the service raised significant competition concerns, noting that Name.com, operated in common with Donuts, competed with DropCatch, and asked ICANN to seek formal guidance from competition authorities.⁠[14]

ICANN Vice President Russ Weinstein replied that DropZone raised no competition concerns requiring referral to a competition authority, saying ICANN had thoroughly evaluated the request, including the matters TurnCommerce raised.⁠[15]

On September 29, ICANN and Donuts subsidiaries signed amendments adding DropZone to the relevant registry agreements.⁠[16]

TurnCommerce filed a comment on the initial report on dispute-resolution access for intergovernmental and international non-governmental organizations (IGO-INGOs), saying it did not support the preliminary policy recommendations.⁠[17]

The company filed a comment on revisions to ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (DIDP), arguing that they would reduce ICANN’s transparency and accountability.⁠[18]

The supporter list published by domain investor Elliot Silver for his 2022 Pan-Mass Challenge fundraising included Turn Commerce (Jeff Reberry and Andrew Reberry).⁠[19]

TurnCommerce argued that Verisign’s .NET registry agreement should be put out to competitive tender or, failing that, that an economist should assess whether the $9.92 fee cap and 10% yearly escalations were appropriate.⁠[20]

The consultation received 57 submissions, 9 of them from organizations, including TurnCommerce.⁠[21]

NameBright launched a beta of a new user interface, switching its color scheme from orange to purple and making the site mobile-friendly.⁠[22]

TurnCommerce filed a main comment and two supplemental filings on the .COM renewal, arguing that ICANN’s bylaws empower it to regulate top-level domain prices in the public interest and criticizing the public comment process as lacking transparency and accountability.⁠[23]

After receiving 28 comments, the ICANN Board adopted Resolution 2024.11.25.01 approving the renewed .COM agreement. In its rationale the Board said ICANN is “neither a competition authority nor a price regulator,” and that the registry operator determines .COM wholesale prices.⁠[24]

Besides its main accreditation, DropCatch operated 1,201 registrars; the average number of .com domains per registrar fell from 58 in December 2023 to 25 in December 2024. Domain-industry writer Andrew Allemann estimated that ICANN overhead per domain rose from about $8 to about $18 and suggested the company might drop some accreditations.⁠[25]

Zaddy, LLC filed a UDRP complaint over zaddy.com, held by HugeDomains; a three-member WIPO panel denied the complaint because the domain predated the complainant’s trademark rights by more than 13 years, and found it to be reverse domain name hijacking.⁠[26]

After buying 300 more, DropCatch-branded registrars exceeded 1,500.⁠[27]

NameBright says it has served domain investors since 2003, manages more than 6.3 million domains, can handle more than 500,000 domains in a single account, and charges what it pays for .com, .net and other extensions.⁠[28]

NameBright’s trust and security page sets out account and domain protections, a dispute policy and an abuse reporting channel.⁠[29]

Domains won at DropCatch are added automatically to the user’s NameBright account.⁠[30]

The company is remote-first while keeping a downtown Denver office; it has a flat organizational structure, and its benefits include paid time off, medical, dental and vision insurance, life and disability insurance, and a 401(k) employer match.⁠[31]

Its stated core values include always learning, automation, being data driven, family first and teamwork.⁠[2]

The company and its registrars are ICANN-accredited and operate under the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement; the company is a member of the ICANN Registrar Stakeholder Group, is a Platinum Member of the Internet Commerce Association through NameBright, and says it shares the mission of the DNS Abuse Institute.⁠[32]

Its registrar holds IANA ID 1441.⁠[33]

The Better Business Bureau rates NameBright D- for failing to respond to two complaints.⁠[5]

TurnCommerce: Official website: https://www.turncommerce.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[34]

HugeDomains: Official website: https://www.hugedomains.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

NameBright: Official website: https://www.namebright.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[28]

DropCatch: Official website: https://www.dropcatch.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[35]