Get Whois Details of Domain Names in Batch using Multiple Servers with FastWhoIs: Review and Giveaway

Do you need a domain name for your business and that on is already registered? Can't you find the contact details of that website? There are many cases like this when you may like to contact the owner of a webpage and can't find their details in the website. A common next step is to search for the registrant name, address, email by querying the WHOIS information of the domain name [e.g. www.insightsintechnology.com]. There are a number of online resources which provide that information for free but most requires to sign up or some tells you to query in another database for complete information.  Often the results are displayed as an image, so extracting details requires laborious manual typing over and over again. If you have been fed up with all these, then you may like to have a look at FastWhoIs by Iconico. It can query for a list of domain names in a number of Whois servers. It has added functionality to parse in a web address using regular expressions to search for domain names, email addresses, phone numbers etc.

Features & Specifications

• FastWhoIs comes as a small installer [705 Kb] without a digital signature. Installation is clean and fast, requires 2.8 Mb of disk space. Desktop & Quick Launch icons are not created automatically.
• The software runs on Windows XP to Windows 7, both 32 and 64 bit versions are supported. .Net Framework 2.0 is needed for proper functioning of the software. Although there is no such requirement of the RAM and CPU speed, higher configuration will of course make the processing faster.
• FastWhoIs GUI is not very exciting but is designed to easily access all the features.

Main GUI

• The software minimizes to tray by showing a tray tip.

• It can be made to run at Windows Startup.
• It can show Tooltips on every section.

• Domain names can be entered manually, in batch via a text file or by adding those in queue. It can also monitor clipboard text and run the query at specific intervals.

• The Whois servers it queries are

1. whois.tucows.com
2. whois.ripe.net
3. whois.directnic.com
4. whois.publicdomainregistry.com
5. whois.names4ever.com
6. whois.enterprice.net
7. whois.indom.com
8. whois.psi-usa.info
9. whois.dotregistrar.com
10. whois.melbourneit.com
11. whois.markmonitor.com
12. whois.easydns.com
13. whois.tmagnic.net
14. whois.netnames.com
15. whois.ascio.com
16. whois.joker.com
17. whois.corenic.net
18. whois.dotster.com
19. whois.namejuice.com
20. whois.4domains.com
21. whois.corporatedomains.com
22. whois.domainnamesales.com
23. whois.stargateinc.com
24. whois.schlund.info
25. whois.libris.com
26. whois.interdomain.net
27. whois.networksolutions.com
28. whois.godaddy.com

• The query can be made to single or all servers.
• The server list can be export as a text file.
• If you want to add a server to that list, export the list as a text file, edit and import that list.
• All the import and export operations can be set to a particular folder.

• Server settings can be managed.

• The query result can be appended to the existing list (default) or can be added after clearing the list. The query result can also be written on a text file.
• The software has a nice feature called Http Domains which is for retrieving domain names from web pages using Regular Expressions (Regex). Once retrieved, FastWhois can be used to view the information about these domain names. Since this section uses Regex, it can be used actually to search for anything by changing the regular expression.

Http Domains Feature

• There are two ways to use Http Domains. In words of the developer

1. The ‘Wizard generated pattern’ mode is the mode in which you specify a few requested settings such as the number of words in the domain and the domain extension (or the TLD) and the program generates the regular expression which is needed to search for those domains. This is done in Step 2 (after you’ve selected ‘Wizard generated pattern’ in Step 1).
Once you have defined how many words your domains look like and what extension they should have in Step 2, then in Step 3 you need to press the “Add Pattern” button which will add the regular expression defined to the list of patterns which will be used for searching the domains. You can have as many patters (regular expressions) as you want when searching which means you can search for all domains with a single name and a specified extension and you can also search for all domains with 2, 3, 4, or more words and a specified extension.
Once you have your search patterns (regular expressions) in Step 2 and Step 3 you need to add the web pages in which you want to perform the search. You can add these web pages in Step 4.
Once you have added all your web pages where the search will take place, then you can start the search by pressing the “Start Parsing” button in Step 4.
The bottom tab page which is called “Retrieved Words” will show your results and the one called ”Web Address Parsing Details” will show if there were any issues while parsing a web page.
2. The second mode is when you select ‘User specific pattern’ and this one behaves exactly like the mode described above except that the user has to enter his own search pattern (regular expression). Because the user can enter his search pattern it means that the search can be run for anything: phone numbers, zip codes, email addresses, URLs to other pages, etc not only domain names as in the first mode.

• The software have a online documentation that describes the product features.
• The software uses minimal system resources at idle time, little while querying Whois of domains and uses moderately high while parsing webpages using Regex.

System Resource Usage at Idle Time

System Resource Usage While Querying Whois Servers

System Resource Usage While Parsing Webpages

• Uninstallation of FastWhoIs does not leave any leftovers.

My Verdict

Although I don't have any business need to search for domain name information in batch, I like this tool simply because I hate to open browsers for the search process and here you can search by querying multiple Whois servers. I may not use the website parsing feature, but this can be valuable to researchers and for businesses. I also liked the simplicity and the completeness of the product. Finally, I had a very nice time learning about the software with the developer Constantin Florea; he is helpful, polite and ready to take and implement suggestions. my utmost wish about this software is a portable version. That would make the software even more useful. Until he implements such feature, you can carry the two files FastWhoIs.exe and Interop.IWshRuntimeLibrary.dll together with you, to use FastWhois as a portable application.

Download

Trial version of FastWhoIs can be downloaded from the following link
http://iconico.blob.core.windows.net/ico/fastWhois/FastWhois.exe

CRC-32: f5262719
MD4: 944a4581f7812a21b5f7a82e074656bf
MD5: f958d48a73a8dda9dd86b50dcc9eb8db
SHA-1: ae4de5ba5633683e214ecd6d1e2b0a7017ab1fcb

Giveaway

Constantin have arranged 40 lifetime licenses for our blog readers. If you are interested in a copy of the software please follow the rules.

Subscribe to Insights in Technology Email Newsletter. if you are not already subscribed. Don't forget to verify the subscription in the email address provided. 
or, 
Like the Facebook Page of Insights in Technology. 

or,

Follow me in Google+.

Comment below to notify me which rule you have followed. 

• If you have subscribed to Email Newsletter, a comment using the email address used to subscribe newsletter is sufficient. Please don't write the email address in the comment. 
• If you have liked the Facebook Page, either comment using your Facebook Profile or comment using any email address but with a link to your Facebook profile page.
• If you have followed me in Google+, comment using any email address but with a link to your Google+ profile page.

Optionally, you may share about this giveaway in any social networks, forums, blogs etc.

Giveaway will run until 9th July, 2012, 23:59 GMT.

Giveaway Ended

Best of Luck !!