Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and Dingoblue Services (ABN 40 705 499 787), operator of the DomainShark service at domainshark.com.au. By accessing or using DomainShark you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

1. The service

DomainShark provides:

• the SharkDEX, a search index of Australian domain names that have expired and become re-registrable;
• per-domain detail pages including length, age, hyphens, history, wayback presence and a SharkDEX score;
• free member accounts with quota and personalisation;
• a curated marketplace of pre-loved domains;
• a programmatic developer API (the “API”) offered with a limited unauthenticated demo tier and one or more paid subscription tiers (see Section 16 below);
• a handoff to our registrar partner Dingoblue at members.dingoblue.com.au for actual domain registration, transfer and management.

DomainShark itself is not a registrar. We do not hold, transfer, renew or invoice for domain names. Domain purchases and renewals are completed by our registrar partner under their own terms and pricing. Where this site quotes a price (for example “from AU$21/year”) it is an indicative figure shown at the registrar at the time of writing; the price you pay is the one shown at checkout on the registrar site.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. By creating an account you confirm the information you provide is accurate and that you will keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for activity that occurs under your account.

3. Search tokens and quotas

Search is free, subject to a token-based fair-use quota:

• each keyword search costs 5 tokens;
• each “Surprise me” random pick costs 1 token;
• guests receive a lifetime allocation of tokens; signed-in members receive a higher daily allocation.

We may change token costs, allocations, refresh cadence and abuse thresholds at any time. We may temporarily throttle, restrict or block access from any account or IP address if we reasonably believe it is being used for automated scraping, abuse, or activity that risks the integrity of the service.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• scrape, crawl, mirror or systematically harvest any part of the SharkDEX or marketplace;
• circumvent or attempt to circumvent token quotas, rate limits, bot challenges, IP bans or account suspensions;
• use the service to harass, threaten, defame or impersonate any person or organisation;
• upload content (e.g. via the contact, removal or sell forms) that is unlawful, infringing, deceptive, or contains malware;
• reverse-engineer, decompile, or interfere with the operation of the service or its security mechanisms;
• use the service to violate any law, including Australian consumer law, intellectual property law, anti-spam law, and auDA policies governing .au domains.

For details see our Acceptable Use Policy.

5. Listings and removals

The SharkDEX includes only records confirmed as unregistered. Inclusion of a domain in the search index is not a recommendation, valuation or guarantee of availability at any later point in time. Domain availability can change between the moment a search is performed and the moment a registration request is submitted.

If you believe a listing should be removed, submit a removal request via /remove or any domain detail page. We will action genuine removal requests promptly. We may reject obviously frivolous or vexatious requests.

6. Marketplace listings

If you list a domain for sale through the marketplace, you warrant that you own or are authorised to sell the domain and that the listing does not infringe any third-party right. Listing fees and commission rates are set out on the Sell page and apply at the time of listing. Commission is capped at 5% of the sale price across every tier.

7. Intellectual property

The DomainShark name, logo, design, code, the SharkDEX index structure, and the scoring methodology are owned by Dingoblue Services. You are granted a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the service for its intended purpose. Nothing in these Terms transfers any intellectual property to you.

Domain names themselves are public identifiers in the DNS and are not claimed as our intellectual property.

8. Third-party services

The service relies on third-party providers including hosting and content-delivery infrastructure, transactional email delivery, optional third-party sign-in, a payment processor for paid subscriptions, and our registrar partner Dingoblue. Their terms and privacy practices apply when you interact with them. We are not responsible for the availability or content of third-party services. A current list of named subprocessors is available on request and is summarised in our Privacy Policy.

9. Disclaimers

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we exclude all express and implied warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not warrant that:

• the SharkDEX is complete, accurate or up to date at any given moment;
• a domain shown as available will remain available, or be registrable by you;
• the service will be uninterrupted, error-free or free from security flaws;
• a marketplace listing will result in a sale or transfer.

Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability to you for any claim arising out of or in connection with the service is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you paid us in the twelve months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) AU$100. We are not liable for indirect, consequential, incidental, special or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or opportunity, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. For consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded, our liability is limited (at our option) to re-supplying the relevant service or paying the cost of having it re-supplied.

11. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Dingoblue Services from and against any claim, loss, liability or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your breach of these Terms, your use of the service in violation of law, or any content you submit through forms or listings.

12. Termination

You may stop using the service at any time and may delete your account by contacting us. We may suspend or terminate your access (with or without notice) if you breach these Terms, if required by law, or to protect the integrity of the service. Provisions intended to survive termination (including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability and governing law) will continue to apply.

13. Changes to the service or these Terms

We may change the service, its features, its quotas or its pricing at any time. We may also update these Terms; the “Last updated” date at the top will change and, for material changes, signed-in members will be notified by email. Continued use after a change constitutes acceptance.

14. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia. You and Dingoblue Services submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Queensland and the Federal Court of Australia.

15. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Use the contact form with “Terms” in the subject line.

16. Developer API terms

If you use the DomainShark developer API (the “API”), these additional terms apply in addition to the rest of these Terms. In the event of any conflict, this Section 16 governs your use of the API.

16.1 Access tiers

The API is offered with a limited unauthenticated demo tier for evaluation and one or more paid subscription tiers for production use. Each tier has its own request quotas, rate limits, field exposure, page sizes, support level and (where applicable) webhook entitlements. Current tiers, prices and quotas are published on the API page and may change from time to time. The version of the tiers and pricing that applies to you is the version in force at the start of your current billing period (or, for the demo tier, the version in force at the time of the request).

16.2 API keys

Paid tiers require an API key, issued from your account. You are responsible for keeping your key confidential and for all activity performed with it. We treat each request bearing a valid key as authorised by you. If you believe a key has been compromised, you must revoke and rotate it immediately from your account; we are not liable for usage prior to revocation.

16.3 Quotas, rate limits and fair use

You must respect documented per-second, per-minute, per-hour and per-month limits for your tier. We may throttle, queue or reject requests that exceed these limits, and we may temporarily or permanently restrict access for sustained over-limit activity, distributed-evasion patterns (e.g. spreading load across multiple keys or IPs to defeat per-tier caps), or activity that materially degrades the service for other users. “Burst” allowances are courtesies, not entitlements.

16.4 Permitted use of API data

Data returned by the API is licensed to you for use inside your own product, internal tooling or research. You may cache responses for performance, subject to any cache-control headers we return. You may not, without our prior written consent:

• republish, redistribute or resell the SharkDEX dataset (in whole or in substantial part) as a competing search index, downloadable file, public mirror, or dataset product;
• combine API responses with other sources for the purpose of reconstructing, in whole or in substantial part, our drop list, scoring, ranking or marketplace catalogue;
• use the API to populate a public “available domains” feed, RSS, sitemap or scraping endpoint for third parties;
• use API output to generate unsolicited commercial outreach (cold email, cold SMS, or other contact to registrants or prior holders);
• train, fine-tune or evaluate generative or predictive machine-learning models on bulk API responses without a written data-licence from us;
• use the API in any way that would violate the Acceptable Use Policy, the auDA .au Licensing Rules, the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) or any other applicable law.

For redistribution, syndication or bulk-data needs, contact us for a separate written data licence.

16.5 Webhooks

If your tier includes webhooks, you authorise us to deliver event notifications to the HTTPS endpoint(s) you configure. You are responsible for verifying our delivery signature, for the security and availability of your endpoint, and for processing only the events you trust. We may retry failed deliveries with backoff and may disable an endpoint that fails persistently.

16.6 Billing, renewal and cancellation

Paid API tiers are billed in advance per billing period (typically monthly), in Australian dollars (AUD), exclusive of GST unless stated otherwise. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period at the then-current price for your tier; we will give you reasonable notice of any price change before it applies to you. You may cancel renewal at any time from your account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. Except where required by the Australian Consumer Law, fees already paid are non-refundable, and partial periods are not pro-rated. Overage on metered tiers (where offered) is billed at the rate published on the API page for that tier.

16.7 Payment processor

Card payments are processed by an independent PCI-compliant payment processor. Your card details are submitted directly to that processor and are not stored on our servers. The processor's terms apply to the payment transaction itself.

16.8 Availability and changes

We aim for high availability but do not provide a contractual uptime SLA on the demo tier or on the standard paid tiers. Enterprise-style SLA arrangements, where offered, are documented separately. We may add, change, deprecate or remove endpoints, fields, parameters or events. Breaking changes will, where reasonably practicable, be introduced as a new versioned path (e.g. /api/v2/) with a deprecation window for the prior version of at least 90 days. Bug fixes, response-shape corrections, additional fields, additional error codes and security-related changes may be made without a deprecation window.

16.9 Suspension and termination of API access

In addition to the general termination rights in Section 12, we may suspend or revoke API keys (with or without notice) where we reasonably believe the API is being used in breach of these Terms, the AUP, applicable law, or where suspension is necessary to protect the integrity of the service. Where we terminate for cause, no refund is payable for the remainder of the billing period.

16.10 Attribution and branding

You may state that your product “uses the DomainShark API” or “is powered by DomainShark” using factual wording. You may not use our name, logo or branding in a way that suggests endorsement, partnership or certification without our prior written consent.