Our site plans on issuing subdomains for free (xxxxx.mysite.com), and also the buy-in opportunity to choose a domain name and have it point to the subdomain via a CNAME. The site is geared to a non-technical demographic, so ease-of-use is a necessity, hence this question.
Are there any API's, reseller accounts, etc, that you've used to accomplish this?
http://www.enom.com/resellers/overview_api.asp
The testing we've done so far, as we continue to build our service (pre-launch), has found the API capable of everything we need it to do, from domain checking and registration to e-mail forwarding address creation.
Would love to chat, as I suspect we'll be dealing with some similar issues (e.g. how to walk non-technical customers through transfering an existing domain name). You don't have any contact info in your HN about section, but feel free to send an e-mail to the address listed in mine.