I tried to access my IP Neighborhood account this week only to find the site was down. I assumed it was temporary and tried again a number of times, but it never came back online.
I now know that the service is gone for good. I wasn’t notified about this, instead it was the cancellation of my subscription that I received by email this afternoon which confirmed it.
I’m disappointed about the situation for two reasons.
- I really liked the product. In fact, I dedicated a large part of an article to detailing the great features of IP Neighborhood. It was a genuinely useful tool for my domain investments, and one that I’ll miss.
- I wasn’t told the service would be closing. The lights were just turned off.
On the plus side, I did see some recent activity from the founder (Simon Johnson) on social media accounts – so I know Simon is ok.
Simon, I understand that circumstances change and sometimes you need to refocus your activities, but it would have been nice to at least get a heads up on the closure! You’re most welcome to share any info or explanation in the comments below.
An interesting development, perhaps it wasn’t profitable enough. There was a price hike earlier this year if memory serves -I rarely used the service again. .. The main challenge for a site like IPNeighbourhood is getting more than just domainers to use it. And the reality is 80% of commercial internet users don’t even know how to find out who owns a domain name without Googling ‘how to find out who owns a domain’.
Thanks for commenting.
I don’t know what led to the closure so can only speculate, but I think you could be right and there wasn’t enough customers for it to be sustainable.
I certainly would have paid more for the service, as it was very good value compared to similar offerings and it had more data for the local .au market.