This may come as a shock to many of you, but I do not think Escrow.com is your best option for an Escrow service for domain names. The main reason for this is because of the Whois system and the fact Escrow.com does nothing with the domain transfer.

Here is why I think it’s unsafe and can turn into a very long, drawn out process and unsafe.

After payment is made by the buyer, escrow contacts you via email and let’s you know this. At this point, Escrow.com gives you directions to work with the buyer to get the domain transfered to them. This gives the seller two options. 1.) "push" or 2.) transfer.

Doing a transfer will hold you from getting paid for at least 5 days, let alone the pain it is to transfer. If the buyer has never done a domain transfer, then it’s even going to be a bigger pain in the ass.

Once the push/transfer has taken place, Escrow.com "verifies" that the transfer has taken place. From my understanding they mainly use Whois to verify. They also ask the buyer to place a checkmark and accept to say they got it.

Here is where it get’s hairy…. Let’s say the buyer is a Scammer (sadly a lot of buyers are).

You do your part as the seller and push/transfer the domain to them as Escrow.com requested. Once the scammer get’s the domain in their account, they instantly change the whois information BACK to your information. They do not put the little checkmark in the box and accept that they got the domain. They wait a couple days and contact Escrow and say they never got the domain and request for their money back.

Escrow will investigate, putting a hold on the domain payment. The first thing they will check is Whois. They will see YOUR info (sellers) because the buyer changed the whois info back to yours after the transfer. Now what?

Escrow.com will likely ask you for Proof that you transfered the domain, which you should be able to provide as most registrars have a tracking system in place but how many days do you think all this is going to take? Is your proof of the push/transfer enough? What if you push/transfer your domain and Escrow.com takes the "buyers" side and doesn’t pay out the money the buyer has paid?

All these things Can Happen. The likely hood is that Escrow.com will take the sellers side with the proof, but who says the "seller" couldn’t "fake" the push/transfer confirmations and the scam flips? Registrars can not provide push/transfer info to Escrow from my understand, so do not expect any help from your registrar.

So what is safe? The safest escrow systems imo are ones that Handle the domain and the money! Escrow services like Moniker.com and EscrowDNS.com both make the seller Push/Transfer the domain to Them. They (escrow company) push the domain to the buyer after they approved payment. There is NO question if the domain was pushed/transfered to the buyer then and the seller WILL get paid. The chances of any hold up are Greatly reduced and the speed should be there as well.

My two choices for any domain name escrow transaction is Moniker.com or EscrowDNS.com because they deal with the push/transfer of the domain name Directly. EscrowDNS.com might be new to many of you, but it’s run by a domainer (Justin Godfrey) who is a very respected domainer. Justin is a member of DnForum.com under the handle Rockefeller.

So if you use an escrow service that does not play the roll of the middle man, and take the push/transfer of the domain before the buyer get’s it, you may want to rethink who you use for your escrow needs.