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Company known for securing domain name transactions is acquired by Australian company.
Freelancer.com, an online marketplace for freelance services, has acquired escrow service Escrow.com for $7.5 million.
Escrow.com is a popular service among domain name investors and has handled over $2.2 billion worth of transactions to date.
Margins for escrow services are slim, and today’s acquisition announcement puts it in perspective: Escrow.com handled $220 million transactions last year, generating $5 million in revenue and just $1.2 million EBITDA.
Escrow.com will remain a California based company and will operate as usual going forward.
Freelancer.com recently raised AUD$10 million, in part to fund the acquisition.
I’ve reached out to Escrow.com president Brandon Abbey to find out if he will be continuing with the company.
Some Comments:
jZ:
wow. very concerning. i am not sure how escrow.com will continue to work as they do being owned by an Australian company. i certainly hope they keep the operations stateside as if wires are coming out of Australia i am going to look for other options..it also seems extremely cheap. i don’t get why they would sell.
Ryan:
Like escrowhill in NZ
Funny agreed got bought out, now everything is owned upside down, I do not get this deal, I am sure escrow could have raised a higher offer stateside
Sam A:
It: in the press release “The Escrow.com group staff will be continuing with the California-based business.” The service is great and hopefully this means that the escrow.com UI gets an overhaul, it’s been pretty stagnant for 10-years!
Aron:
Escrow.com has always been one of the best peace of mind services for the domain industry. I hope the level of service stays the same. Congrats to both parties.
thelegendaryjp:
I agree, the best option out there past and present and hope it remains as such. As far as their UI goes, who cares, simple, works and easy to navigate. I would be ok with a fee raise, don’t say that often.
As far as the price, yikes I too feel they could have squeezed more out if public but maybe there are other factors.
Paolo:
It’s time for European professionals to wake up and take this great chance to create a valid alternative in Europe, for europeans, independent, subject to European law, with low payment fees (since as you know wire transfers have the same cost within Euro area, as it was a domestic wire transfer), with funds received in 1 day, etc. and with the peace of mind that for any problem you can always take legal actions paying “low” fees, etc.
Wake up Europeans… Create a copy of Escrow.com with all the features they have clearly available on their web site with few click (for instance the “buy it now button”), but for Europe, add maybe also translations in some most important languages to raise the level of trust perceived by prospect buyers…
This is something that has been lacking for 10 years in Europe….
Brandon:
In a nutshell – We are a licensed and government audited escrow company that has been supporting the domain community for 16 years.
Escrow.com will be operating exactly the same way we always have. Instead of being owned by an individual investor we will be owned by a public company with a market cap of around $500M. What this means to the domain community is continued product innovation at a much faster pace. I have been meeting with executives from Freelancer for the past two weeks and their resources are incredible compared to what we have. This is good for our employees, Freelancer and most importantly our customers. As always, thank you for your business and your trust.
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