Domain Upgrade with James Iles

Domain name upgrades happen every day and the buying pool gets smaller, especially in the ultra-premium domain category.

Among the hundreds of domain upgrades that closed in March 2022, 7 significant acquisitions were discovered. These 7 domains, firmly nestled in the ultra-premium domain category, are now off the market forever.

Here, we explore those 7 names and the companies that acquired them.

Resolution.com

Founded in 2015, Resolution Games is a Swedish game developer, specializing in virtual reality and augmented reality products. It has a string of awards under its belt and has secured $38.5 million in disclosed funding to date, including a $25 million Series C round in 2021.

Resolution Games has operated on ResolutuionGames.com since 2015, but in March 2022 it closed a deal to acquire Resolution.com for an undisclosed fee. The domain was listed for sale at brandable marketplace BrandBucket in February 2021 for $480,000, which may give some idea of the final sales price.

Greenhouse.com

Talent acquisition software company Greenhouse is heavily reliant on its website both for attracting customers and for hosting its applicant tracking system.

Since 2012, companies such as Hubspot, Squarespace, and Wayfair have used Greenhouse to help in the hiring process.

As of publishing, Greenhouse operates on the Greenhouse.io domain. The .io extension has become a popular destination for some companies, but it still represents a diminished presence compared with the .com equivalent.

Smartly, Greenhouse made the move to acquire Greenhouse.com in a deal that closed in March.

Root.com

This upgrade shows that it’s never too late to acquire an ultra-premium.com. Root, a publicly-traded insurance company, has secured its exact-match .com 7 years after launching and almost 18 months after it debuted on the Nasdaq.

Root purchased Root.com from previous owners Root Advisors. Although Root.com currently redirects to Root’s current JoinRoot.com site, it’s expected that Root.com will eventually be the brand’s centerpiece.

Tiny.com

Tiny has been buying companies since 2014 using a successful “one month process” to close acquisitions within 30 days. It now operates 35 majority owned companies and has a minority investment in over 90 firms.

Tiny acquired Tiny.com, upgrading from TinyCapital.com and eliminating a problem that many founders face. While operating on TinyCapital.com, Tiny was often wrongly referred to as Tiny Capital. Now at Tiny.com, Tiny doesn’t have that issue.

Bread.com

Financial services need to own their exact-match .com for security, brand protection, and customer trust among the dozens of considerations. It’s no surprise then, that Bread Financial secured Bread.com in March 2022.

Bread Financial, which racked up $921 million in revenue in Q1 of 2022, is the new brand name for Alliance Data, taking on the name of the buy-now-pay-later startup the company acquired in 2020.

Bread.com was previously owned by flower-milling company Ardent Mills.

Gravity.com

Premium WordPress plugin developer Gravity Forms sealed a deal to buy Gravity.com from Yahoo AdTech, announced by Gravity Forms on Twitter in early March.

Gravity Forms’ CEO Carl Hancock commented on the acquisition days later, noting that “the single word .com effect is real.”

As of publishing, Gravity.com redirects to GravityForms.com

Attest.com

British consumer research company Attest disclosed a $60 million Series B funding round in October 2021 to bring its total funding to $95.1 million.

In March, Attest secured its exact-match.com, Attest.com, upgrading from AskAttest.com in the process.

The SaaS Business is reliant on its website to provide its product range, so owning and operating Attest.com will aid the company’s rapid expansion.