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Team Efficiency

How Ecodomen.ru Helps Save on Domains

How Ecodomen.ru Helps Save on Domains

Ecodomen.ru is a volunteer-driven project with open-source code. Its mission is to create a platform that helps users save money on domain registration and renewal.

The recommended usage: to find the most cost-effective domain registrar in the .ru zone for the long term, visit https://ecodomen.ru, enable sorting by ascending renewal cost, and choose the option that suits you best—likely the first result.

In this article, I will cover:

  • What problems Ecodomen.ru solves for users
  • Our future plans
  • Who we’re inviting to join our team

About the Product

If you’re planning to create your own website, you’ll need to choose and register a domain name—a unique address for your site on the internet, such as mydomain.ru. This requires contacting a domain registrar, a company that specializes in registering such addresses. To avoid naming names, here’s a link to Wikipedia that provides examples of registrars.

Interestingly, while all registrars essentially offer the same service—domain registration—their prices can vary significantly. For example, the cost of renewing a domain for the next year can range from 149 to 19,999 RUB, depending on the registrar. On average, renewal prices hover around 1,000-2,000 RUB per year based on observations of clients and developers.

Ecodomen.ru is a service that helps users find and compare prices for different registrars’ services. With this tool, you can easily choose the best offer, especially if you need to register or renew multiple domains. By using Ecodomen.ru, you can significantly reduce domain management costs.

Project History

The project began as a playground for one developer, Maria (https://github.com/orgs/ecodomen/people/mrezvova), as a so-called pet project. It quickly became clear that the workload was too much for one person, so we started looking for developers who also wanted to practice their skills.

Our first attempt to attract new contributors was in Maria’s programming club at her high school. However, when students who had just learned to print “Hello World” in the console saw a project with a “serious” tech stack, it was clear they weren’t ready to participate due to their skill levels.

We turned to the job market, and the initial team of developers was assembled through an unpaid internship. This team consisted of trainees who needed experience working on a large—“almost commercial”—project and developing teamwork skills. Together, we completed most of the work on the first version of the product.

As the project grew, the team expanded to include a project manager, designer, tester, and frontend developers. This allowed us to improve the site’s functionality and appearance, better organize our work, and ensure higher quality in the final product.

However, after a few months, many developers transitioned to other, paid projects, while others left for personal reasons. We once again recruited new developers.

Today, the project’s chat has over 20 participants, each contributing to the project with varying degrees of activity. To emphasize, the project is organized on a volunteer basis, meaning all participants work without compensation.

For more details about the team and the project’s history, watch this video:

Current State and Future Plans

The product is currently in its MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage. We have implemented price parsers for all registrar websites where it was feasible. For the remaining 3% of registrars, prices were entered manually.

The parsers periodically (ideally daily) update price data from registrar websites. The collected data is presented on a webpage, where users can sort and filter by the most useful parameters: name, website, and prices for registration, renewal, and transfer of .ru domains.

It’s important to explain why we collect these three specific prices:

  1. Registration cost: The price of leasing a domain for the first year. This is usually the most visible price for users and often the first thing they notice. Registrars often set this price very low but increase it significantly in subsequent years.
  2. Renewal cost: The price of leasing a domain for the second and subsequent years. This is the cost users should pay the most attention to, as it determines the long-term expenses of owning a domain. However, this price is often less prominently displayed on registrar websites.
  3. Transfer cost: This is useful to know if you decide to move your domains from one registrar to another. The registrar receiving your domains will charge this fee.

With these functionalities, we aim to confirm the product’s value for users and continue developing its features based on their feedback.

In addition, we have ambitious technical plans:

  • Splitting the backend (using Django REST Framework or FastAPI) and frontend (using React.js or Vue.js).
  • Developing a microservices-based backend with FastAPI for experimentation.
  • Migrating the database from PostgreSQL to YDB as a technical experiment. This involves creating YDB adapters for Django ORM and SQLAlchemy.
  • Writing unit tests, API tests, E2E tests, and setting up load testing.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback on the product: https://forms.gle/SKXX2XffoAYZbGxW9.

Join the Team

We are currently looking for specialists in product management and promotion: product managers, marketers (including SMM), analysts, and technical writers. We welcome both beginners who need experience or a portfolio project and professionals who like the idea and can provide advice or review the work of junior specialists.

Additionally, we have many technical roles open.

Fill out the application form to join the project, and we’ll invite you to the team: https://forms.gle/xxuYPCR7AvLj2z7J7.

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