Alter.com was a hybrid brandable marketplace, with both curated and submitted domain names. It was founded by Deven Patel. Here is his message announcing the marketplace in September 2020.
Alter was a solid and innovative brandable marketplace with numerous strong features. The founder interacted with the domain community and took into account feedback from sellers. Alter also had very reasonable commission, plus fast payouts. Alter quickly attracted a number of sellers.
Alter ceased marketplace operation in March of 2022, and a proposed sale of the marketplace to a buyer fell through.
However, Alter.com remained partly operational until about a month ago. No domain names were for sale, but those with accounts could still access their record of sales, and continue to use features such as trademark search and domain appraisal.
This was to permit lease-to-own payments from previous Alter domain name sales to continue to be processed, and funds paid out to the sellers.
Recently Alter.com ceased to resolve, however, and there was speculation on NamePros regarding what this might mean, and who now controlled the name.
This morning, when I checked Alter.com, I was redirected a trademark search site, Furm.com.
The site looks very similar, even the purple color scheme, to the previous trademark search on Alter. It certainly appears that at least that aspect of Alter is now operational as Furm.com. For now at least, it is free to do trademark searches.
It will be interesting to see if other features of Alter become active on Furm. If the owner of Furm wishes to add more, please comment.
In any case, I am delighted to see the excellent trademark search from Alter now available once more.
PS I also learned that the appraisal section is again operational, although I don’t see a direct link. If you go to alter.com/appraisals it works though.
