The biggest problem of having a portfolio of over 3,000 domains is of course the renewals, but not only the decision what to renew and what to drop is tricky, but the most annoying part is the constant renewal emails. Some registrars like to send multiple emails for each domain which creates huge amounts of emails in my inbox. I’m getting these on a weekly basis and usually tend to ignore.
Every month or so I login to my main registrar accounts and renew the domains which are to expire. Not a well organized process yet, but I don’t like to use auto-renewals and I usually renew the top domains for a couple years upfront.
There is software like dnzoom that helps automate this stuff, which is sensible for large portfolios, however giving all your registrar passwords to one site seems a little too much for me, besides it’s not really something you can’t manage manually.
Naturally sometimes I forget to renew good names and lose them..
How do you manage renewals?
I have my 4900 + domain names well organised with all the exp. dates set and linked to the calender which gives me a reminder 20 days prior to the domain name exp date.
The domain names which I do NOT sell are extended by 2 years at a time.
I have a dedicated email address that I use for domain registration purposes.
I do same as you. Renew them manually, choose which what to renew and what not. It’s easier to remember what domains I own if I have to look at them at least once per year 🙂