DefendDomain compared to Netcraft
Netcraft is a large, long-established cybercrime detection and takedown operation built for the world's biggest banks, governments and technology companies.
We call you within one working day. Or book a 30-minute demo: enough for us to give you a clear annual price for your domains.
Netcraft at a glance
Netcraft runs cybercrime detection and takedown at internet scale for banks, governments and registries, a different centre of gravity from most Digital Risk Protection (DRP) suites.
DefendDomain is a lookalike domain specialist. Pro suits companies that approve takedowns themselves; Enterprise covers unlimited domains and brands, run by our analysts. For many buyers the price decides it before the features do.
- Netcraft is built around
- Cybercrime detection and takedown at global scale
- Typically sold to
- Enterprise
- Typical annual cost
- Estimated $200,000 to $500,000 a year and above
DefendDomain and Netcraft, side by side
The short version, before the case for either of us. Every claim in the Netcraft column comes from their own published material.
What the product is built around
DefendDomain
Finding web addresses made to look like yours and getting them taken down: lookalike domains, new certificates, copies of your website and of your wording, plus a daily check of your own domains
Netcraft
Cybercrime detection and disruption across phishing, social media, fake shops, malware, credential compromise and more, with domains as one strand
Lookalike domains that never host a website
DefendDomain
We check the email set-up (MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records) of every registered lookalike. When one is set up to send email, we flag it, even if it has no website
Netcraft
Their published sources include certificate transparency logs, DNS registrations and zone files, and they state they detect maliciously registered lookalikes even where no infringing content is hosted yet. Checking a lookalike's email set-up (MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records) and flagging when it can send email is not listed in their public material as of September 2026
When someone copies your website
DefendDomain
The optional website marker (a small script or a 1×1 image on the pages you choose) reports when a copy of a page loads somewhere else, and we search the web for distinctive phrases from your site
Netcraft
Brand abuse detection, logo recognition and fake shop detection are published. A website marker on your pages, and web searches for your wording, are not listed in their public material as of September 2026
Takedowns
DefendDomain
Unlimited on Pro and Enterprise. One click sends the evidence to up to 12 places at once, with automatic follow-ups to the host, registrar and registry
Netcraft
Takedown from start to finish is the centre of the offering, backed by long-standing provider relationships. Packaging and volume are not published, so check your quote
Your own domains
DefendDomain
A daily check of your own domains (email security, DNS and takeover risk, certificates, website settings, exposed files), graded A to F, with a fix for each finding
Netcraft
DMARC reporting and visualisation is a published capability. A daily graded scorecard across email authentication, DNS hygiene and takeover risk, TLS, web hardening and exposure is not part of the published offering
How you buy it
DefendDomain
Pro: an annual plan priced by the number of domains you protect, where you approve each takedown. Enterprise: priced to your needs, with our analysts running the takedowns
Netcraft
Enterprise sales motion. Pricing is quote only and no price list is published
Comparison based on Netcraft's own public product material as of September 2026. Netcraft does not publish a price list, so the annual cost shown is estimated from buyer-reported and analyst sources rather than quoted by Netcraft. Vendors change their products, so check anything that matters to you against their current documentation and your own quote. Netcraft is a trademark of its owner. DefendDomain is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Netcraft.
The facts your vendor review will ask for
About DefendDomain only. Check the same points with any vendor on your shortlist.
- What we check
- Around 500 lookalikes of each of your domains across 240+ domain endings, re-checked every hour. 100+ public certificate logs, watched as entries appear. Copies of your website and of your wording. Your own domains, checked daily and graded A to F.
- Where a takedown goes
- One click sends the evidence to up to 12 places at once: the registrar, the host, the email provider the domain sends through, an abuse-report network, blocklists and threat feeds, browser warning lists and search engines. Not every place applies to every attack: a domain with no website has nothing for a search engine to remove.
- Follow-up
- Automatic. We chase the host and registrar again at 48 and 96 hours, go to the registry at 120 and 168 hours, and tell you if nothing has moved after 30 days. Most takedowns take between 2 and 96 hours.
- Who approves a takedown
- On Pro, someone on your side confirms it is a live attack and approves it with one click. On Enterprise, our analysts check every alert and run the takedowns. Takedowns are unlimited on both.
- Alerts
- Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, SMS, webhook, Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel and Wazuh.
- Security and data
- ISO 27001 certified (certificate 535732026) and Cyber Essentials certified. UK GDPR and EU GDPR. Our main database is hosted in London (AWS eu-west-2).
- Which plan suits whom
- Pro suits companies that approve takedowns themselves. Enterprise covers unlimited domains and brands, run by our analysts.
- Price and contract
- Pro is an annual plan with 5 domains included, priced by the number of domains you protect. Enterprise is priced to your needs. Both are annual: a 12-month minimum, renewing each year unless you give 30 days' notice. We do not publish the Pro price yet.
We call you within one working day to talk it through.
ISO 27001 certified · Cyber Essentials certified · Winner, teiss Cyber Security Start-up of the Year 2026
What Netcraft does well, and who should buy them
Taken from what Netcraft publishes about its own product. If this is the shape of your problem, they are a reasonable buy and we will say so.
Takedown operations at a scale almost nobody matches
Decades of direct relationships with hosting providers, registrars and carriers is not something you can build quickly, and it is the real asset underneath their published takedown volumes.
Breadth across attack types
Their published coverage runs well beyond domains into social platforms, fake shops, credential compromise, malware distribution and phone-based scams. That is a much wider net than ours.
Credibility with the largest buyers
Governments and major banks have bought from them for years. If you are in that tier and procurement wants a vendor with that track record, that is a legitimate reason to pick them.
They do work early, and they say so
Their published material names certificate transparency logs, DNS registrations and zone files among its sources, and states that it detects maliciously registered lookalike domains even where those domains are not yet hosting infringing content. We are not going to pretend otherwise: several vendors in this category detect lookalikes early, not only us.
Where DefendDomain goes deeper
We work on one problem: web addresses made to look like yours, and copies of your website. We find them, tell you which can send email or show a copy of your site, and get them taken down when they are used against you.
Two checks that watch your content as well as the domain
The optional website marker, a small script or a 1×1 image on the pages you choose, reports when a copy of one of those pages loads on another address. We also search the web for distinctive phrases from your site, with AI checking for reworded and partial copies. Neither is listed in their public material as of September 2026, and together they find copies on addresses that look nothing like yours.
Email set-up as well as websites
A lookalike registered only to send fake invoices never hosts a page. We check the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records of every registered lookalike and flag each one that is set up to send email, which can be before its first email goes out.
Run by your finance or IT lead, or by us
Our buyer is often a CFO, a COO or an IT lead rather than a security operations team. On Pro, someone on your side reads each alert and approves a takedown with one click. On Enterprise, our analysts check every alert and run the takedowns. Takedowns are unlimited on both, not negotiated.
What each of us costs
Most vendors in this category do not publish a price list. This is how each of us charges.
- What Netcraft publishes
- Netcraft does not publish a price list. Reported annual values start around $200,000 and run past $500,000, estimated from buyer and analyst sources rather than quoted by Netcraft.
- What moves the number
- At this end of the market the number reflects scale of operation and depth of managed service far more than it reflects a feature list.
- How DefendDomain charges
- Pro is an annual plan priced by the number of domains you protect, with unlimited takedowns. We do not publish the price yet; ask for a pricing call and we call you within one working day.
Choose Netcraft if
- You are a large bank, a government body or a global technology company, and scale of takedown operation is the deciding factor.
- Your threat picture runs across malware, credential compromise, fake shops and phone-based scams as well as domains.
- You have enterprise budget for this line item and a team to consume what the platform produces.
- Procurement needs a vendor with decades of operating history behind it.
Choose DefendDomain if
- An enterprise brand protection contract would be several times your whole security budget.
- The domains that worry you are aimed at your finance team and your suppliers, and most of them will never host a page for anybody to find.
- Somebody copying your website is a live risk, and you want the website marker and web searches for your wording covering it.
- You want unlimited takedowns written into the plan rather than negotiated, with automatic follow-ups on a set schedule.
- You want your own domains graded daily as well as the outside world watched.
- You need it run by someone whose main job is something else, or by our analysts.
What moving actually involves
There is no software to install and no data to move. Lookalike monitoring, certificate watching and the daily check of your own domains need only your domain names. The website marker is optional: a small script or a 1×1 image on the pages you choose.
Step 1
Compare your volume with theirs
Netcraft's scale is real, and it is bought by organisations whose abuse volume justifies it. If you see a handful of lookalikes a quarter, you would be paying for capacity you will not use.
Step 2
Check what a takedown actually costs you today
Whatever you use now, find out whether takedowns are unlimited or drawn down. Ours are unlimited on Pro and Enterprise, sent to up to 12 places at once, and that is often the line item that decides it.
Step 3
Find your renewal date before anything else
Netcraft sells on enterprise terms and those contracts usually run a year or more, so the practical moment to change is the renewal. Find that date first. It tells you whether this is a decision for now or one for the next budget round, and it gives you time to run both in parallel.
Questions buyers ask us about Netcraft
What does Netcraft cost, and is it more than a smaller company needs?
Netcraft does not publish pricing; reported annual values start around $200,000, which are buyer and analyst estimates rather than a quote. Netcraft does what it says, at a scale very few vendors can match, so the overkill question is really about your own volume. If your abuse arrives at the rate a bank or a registry sees it, that capability is worth the cost. If it arrives at the rate a 200-person SaaS company sees it, you are buying for a threat model that is not yours.
Do both of you detect lookalike domains before they are used?
Both of us publish that we detect domains at registration, and both of us monitor certificate transparency logs, so this is not a point of difference and we are not going to claim it is. The difference is what happens next. We check the email set-up (MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records) of every registered lookalike and flag each one that is set up to send email, which is how a domain with no website at all gets noticed. And we watch your content as well as the domain, through the optional website marker and web searches for your wording.
Can a smaller platform really match an enterprise takedown network?
On raw volume across every attack type, no, and we would not claim it. What we can say is that takedowns are unlimited on Pro and Enterprise; that one click sends the evidence to up to 12 places at once; that we check every hour whether the site is still online and follow up with the host, registrar and registry on a set schedule; and that we keep watching in case it comes back.
We are not a large enterprise. Should we look at enterprise vendors?
Yes, because it is useful to know what good looks like. Then check the entry price against the budget you have. A company can be well enough known to be worth impersonating without having a security team to defend it. DefendDomain is built so that someone outside security can run it, or our analysts can run it for you.
Comparing more than one vendor
Most shortlists have three names on them. The same comparison is here for the others, or start from the full comparison hub.
Free scan. No account, no card details.
See your own exposure before you shortlist anybody
Whichever way this decision goes, it is worth knowing which lookalikes of your domain are already registered. The free scan checks 150+ of them in a couple of minutes and emails you the report.
- Typos, other endings and added words, such as yourcompany-invoices.com
- Which ones are registered, and which are set up to send email as you
- The report in your inbox, usually in a couple of minutes. No account, no card details, no sales call.
