Hi,
This post is meant to raise a concern / ask a question about selling domains.
I sold a domain to a client through Vendasta on the premise that the Client Dashboard/Business App would make it easy to manage their domain settings. However, when we went to use it, we quickly found that you can't change the nameservers.
For anybody that builds sites in Wix or Shopify, that's a massive headache because those services rely on changing your NS records.
Also, I was kind of disappointed to see how limited control over your domains you have in the Vendasta platform compared to Godaddy or Google Domains. I doubt any of my clients would ever notice, but it doesn't really feel like you own the domain when you can't edit the name servers or transfer the domain out on your own.
My question is, is there any plan in place to expand the domain settings? I was expecting to see the Godaddy dashboard when I activated a Godaddy domain.
To provide an update:
It's been many hours back and forth with Vendasta's web technicians and Godaddy support. Neither team has been able to help me and I'm pretty disappointed by the whole situation.
My research has uncovered that it appears that Vendasta contracts domain reselling through a company called Wild West Domains.
At this point, I'm just frustrated with the way this is marketed in the Vendasta marketplace. It's labeled as a "GoDaddy Domain" and features GoDaddy's branding all over it, but it is not a true GoDaddy domain. If you contact GoDaddy, they will not be able to authorize you to manage your domain, even if you listed your own GoDaddy email address as the domain owner during the purchase process (which I did). The domain will not appear in your GoDaddy dashboard OR your GoDaddy reseller hub (even though you will get a Domain Reseller confirmation email after purchase).
If you do a WHOIS lookup of a true GoDaddy domain, it lists GoDaddy.com, LLC as the registrar. Domains purchased through "GoDaddy Domain" on Vendasta list Wild West Domains, LLC. I would call this product "Wild West Domains Domain" instead. The only thing that makes it GoDaddy is that Wild West Domains uses some type of GoDaddy API to purchase their domains. It's not what you would be used to if you regularly buy domains through GoDaddy.com.
Ultimately, this is an issue that does not affect 99% of Vendasta users, but if you do design Websites in Wix, then I would highly advise against trying to upsell domains through Vendasta. Vendasta domains are perfect for small business owners who will set it and forget it for life, but not for clients that want to host outside WP (Wix does not allow you to point domains using A or CNAME records, I can't speak for other platforms) or one day transfer their domain to another registrar.
Hi Jake,
Thank you for your post. I'm sitting here thinking I was going to quickly connect the Wix website I just created for my client's launch tomorrow and cannot update the nameservers to complete this publication of the page. Ugh...Your post is most helpful. What did you ultimately do in order to get your client's Wix site to connect to the domain purchased through Vendata "Godaddy Domains"? This is my first time with this and it's quite disappointing indeed. Sigh....
