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Ask HN: What has your experience with lesser-known TLDs been?

29 points by ioddly ↗ HN
I'm curious what your experience with the many new TLDs has been. Specifically, I'm wanting to move my email off gmail and onto a vanity domain, and considering that one of these TLDs will probably have something pretty short and easy to remember available for a reasonable price.

However, the prevailing wisdom has always been that anything other than .com is pretty risky, at least in terms of people being likely to enter your domain/email correctly. I can also imagine bad email validators rejecting these TLDs.

I wonder if, with the explosion of TLDs, are people/systems starting to understand that not everything is a .com, or is it still a bad move?

50 comments

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nightfly
I used an different TLD (.ws) for a few years to have a fun "domain hack" vanity email, and it /was/ too much of a hassle to make sure that people had it right. Especially when dealing with people who have pretty much only ever seen .com domains.
chamakits
The issue I’ve run into more than once is that whatever regex or terrible validation some website is using doesn’t recognize the TLD and marks the email as an invalid email. Hasn’t happened tons, and it’s never been for something super important, but it’s happened more than once.
[deleted]
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jessemillar
Regardless of understanding and ability to type, I've had mixed experiences attempting to access sites with non .com TLDs from behind corporate network policies. You're specifically asking about email here which might not be affected by that, but it's not out of the realm of possibility to want a personal site hosted at the same TLD your email comes from.
bhouston
Dot .io sort of sucks. Moving back to .com
ajeet_dhaliwal
Can you elaborate? I've seen a lot of companies using .io and .ai recently. I don't but I'm curious why you found it was bad.
slow_donkey
My org uses .io - There's been some technical issues discussed in the past with io on hn which should be searchable.

However we've also encountered users being unfamiliar with what .io is/means and if it's safe. Tech companies who serve other tech companies probably don't have this issue but if your audience is to the general public it could be a problem.

diggan
Previous company I worked for foolishly decided to host our API on a .io domain, which stopped working from time to time. Eventually we started hosting the API over .net and .com and never hit any issues.

I was trying to search for any comparisons about tld uptimes, but seems there is none. .io has been one of the lesser good I've used.

jacques_chester
I've owned chester.id.au for over a decade. AuDA has relatively strict registration rules[0], which I appreciate. To accommodate individuals and families they introduced .id.au.

Not as great as I'd hoped. I have to spell it carefully on the phone and have it read back to me. Nobody outside Australia has heard of .id.au. Almost nobody inside Australia has heard of it either.

I recently saw a .ci domain being hijacked[1]. Not even subtly. Just plain old stolen. So I'd avoid Côte d'Ivoire's TLD for the foreseeable future.

[0] https://www.auda.org.au/industry-information/au-domains/

[1] https://medium.com/concourse-ci/were-switchin-domains-5597dc...

rozenmd
Can confirm, am Aussie, first I've heard of .id.au.
diggan
Funny, just hours ago I was looking at buying a .ci domain and couldn't even find a registrar that offered me to purchase it... Good to know so thanks for posting!
dingaling
Spelling in speech is a great point, regardless of TLD.

I have what I thought was a simple .org.uk domain, but human ingenuity has found about three ways to pronounce it. And when I started to spell it out I found that even six letters is too much for most people to put in the right order.

So to the questioner I'd advise:

1. Don't worry about the TLD too much, but do try to pick one that has a stable price forecast. I'd avoid any that are targeted at specific professions or industries as those tend to have their renewal prices raised

2. Do put a lot of effort into the domain name part. Have friends pronounce it. Spell it to them. If you know English-as-second-languaage speakers, ask their opinion.

stevekemp
I had a few problems with people not getting the double-suffix on my domain "steve.org.uk", but I think that problem has disappeared over the past few years.

Since moving to Finland I checked on steve.fi, on a whim, and saw that it was due to expire in a couple of months, so I registered that when it became available and now prefer it.

I have a few org,net,com,io domains, but I'd probably avoid any of the smaller ones - partly due to potential cost-hikes in the future, and partly because some of the smaller TLDs seem less reliable.

hapless
I host my email on a vanity domain with an obscure tld. It's fine.

The worst thing about weirdo TLDs is weirdo registrars, not validators or typos.

jlgaddis
I have two vanity domains with "non-traditional" TLDs: one .is and one .lol.

I do use the .is domain (gadd.is) pretty often for e-mail and the worst that happens is I sometimes have to repeat it or I get asked "That's it? There's no .com or anything?". The "personalized" e-mail addresses that I give out ("your-company@gadd.is") are more confusing to people than the domain name or TLD is.

I don't use the .lol domain for e-mail at all, except when I once created and used the e-mail address wsmith6079 AT recdep.minitrue.oceania.lol for a very specific purpose, mostly to see if any of the others would notice the reference (to 1984) but, AFAIK, no one did.

mcpherrinm
I have used .ca for my personal email for a long time. It works ok with other Canadians, and isn't a huge hassle most other times. I'm sure that there is a nonzero amount of email going to the .com equivalent domain, though. If I were to choose again, I would go for .com if at all reasonable.
gerdesj
However, the prevailing wisdom has always been that anything other than .com is pretty risky

I will take a stab and guess you are from the USA, given that you consider .com as safe. You could also consider .org and maybe .net. Unless you know what you are doing then you are generally better off with your home nation's standard list.

That said, if the last two chars of your family name or a nickname is a country code, you might consider that.

indymike
The biggest snag I've hit is when you use a country domain, search engines tend to think your site isn't interesting outside of the country the TLD belongs to (.io, .in). The new tlds seem to be pretty solid... I worked for an organization that had job boards on 25,000 or so .jobs sites. No issues. I've tried out a lot of the new ones and have had similar results.
huy-nguyen
Google treats .io as as generic TLD like .com.
gkya
In my experience anything that's not Gmail is considered suspicious, .com or not. I still use my email on my domain regardless of what people think though. Never more than a minor inconvenience.

One thing I can suggest though is to stay away from TLDs that get extreme discounts, like .top, .xyz etc, given they are (ab)used quite a bit by spammers, to the point that I had to just blacklist them TLDs.

therealmarv
really? I think more (especially in business world) that gmail.com is very unprofessional. Makes me think they are amateurs and cannot even setup a corporate email address. Nothing against Google (I'm also using gsuite behind my .com address)
fibers
my professional email is mylastname.me and when i tried emailing a firm about an offer it bounced and i had to rely on my normal gmail which was made when i was 13 years old lol. i got the job anyway but i'd be wary of using a country tld for it in the fear that some sysadmins might set up strict whitelists for such things
dynofuz
Im on .health https://1up.health and its been great. They have even done a blog post (https://get.health/casestudies/29-1uphealth) about us to help spread the word. No issues with SEO or others finding us. The only thing we try to do is have anyone that mentions us add a link to the correct .health domain instead of a .com which has happened once before. I have had an issue with some websites saying i dont have a valid email though :/
vanekjar
It depends if the TLD registry is reputable organization. Obviously Verisign (.com, .net), PIR (.org) or Google (.app) seem to be more reputable than Indian Ocean Territory (.io) or Montenegro (.me).

But there is a bunch of other ccTLDs I wouldn't be afraid of, namely .co.uk, .eu, .de, .nl, .se, .cz, .no and many others. It always depends on the particular organization and its rules and security policy.

aquadrop
What's wrong with reputability of Montenegro?
mwilliaams
I was able to obtain williams.blue and it's been pretty great so far. Ive experienced some slight misunderstanding, but its usually easily cleared up.

Then there was the woman who heard "firstname@williams.blue. Yes it ends in .blue" and added .com to the end anyway. Smh

It's quite nice having such a simple domain and email address as firstname@lastname.blue. And unlike many new TLDs, like .io, anybody who knows any English easily understands the word "blue". It requires no explanation.

ymse
> And unlike many new TLDs, like .io, ...

FWIW all two-letter domains are country codes (ccTLD). .io has been around since 1997 :-)

walrus01
Opposite example: I own firstname@lastname.com and my spouse also uses firstname@lastname.com for most emails. We point the MX record for lastname.com at an email server we fully control.

About 1 in 10 people that they give the address to does not believe that it's a real email address, or doesn't understand the basic concept that it's possible for a person to own surname.com as an actual domain that they fully control the email on. The recipients assume that my spouse is so epically clueless that they're giving a mistaken email address which goes nowhere.

mwilliaams
I've been there so many times. Gets old real fast. Many people are simply incredulous that there isn't a "gmail" or "yahoo" etc in my email address.
walrus01
basically "no, but what is your real email address?"

Some degree of confusion happens probably 1 in 5 times giving out the address in person, not my original estimate of 1 in 10...

megous
I wonder what would happen if I gave my =@[mydomain.tld] (mydomain is not my domain :)). I have such an address, but haven't tried to actively give it to anyone outside of people who hit my website. Probably a major confusion.

There are a lot of funny looking e-mail addresses one can create by crafting a local part with acceptable symbols, or by using quotes. Say:

   {+}@abc.tld
   !@abc.tld
   ?@abc.tld
   {|@abc.tld
walrus01
I have a catch-all email inbox at surname.com for any nonexistent inbox, so I could totally give away throwaway one use addresses like teledildonics6000@surname.com
nancyp
I have kept a throwaway at gmail@surname.com to have fun watching people type it the other way around.
joekrill
Really? I've been using a domain name that is my name for years. I've never had a single problem or anyone question on.
geofft
'walrus01 did specifically say that this happens to their spouse, so, I do wonder if this is gendered or otherwise based on presentation/stereotypes. I get little pushback on catchall addresses at my domain (I give $company@ldpreload.com to every company), but I can imagine that if I didn't look like a 20-something guy in a T-shirt and jeans and messenger bag, who therefore stereotypically understands the internet, people would be more likely to question me.
wildrhythms
This 100% mirrors my experience, and not just obscure TLDs. Despite owning <my name>.com, I always, always defer to a @gmail.com address.

Outside of my small bubble of tech savvy folk, not a single person has looked at my perfectly valid email address and thought it wasn't a typo or lame joke.

If I was a company, <name>@<company>.com is totally fine, but as soon as <company> becomes a <name> all bets are off.

Doxin
Tangentially related annecdote: you used to be able to get email addresses @bestaatniet.nl which basically translates to @doesntexist.com. I stopped using that address pretty quickly.
therealmarv
No problem for websites. But I noticed that some (stupid) websites or forms from my business suppliers won't accept email adresses which are not a well known old TLD like .com or country TLDs.

I'm also guessing that the new gTLDs also cause a ton of problems on legacy email systems out there.

So for email to be on the safe side I'm using .com but a new TLD is no problem for websites (that's my experience).

gizmodo59
I realized that Google doesn't support .xyz when I tried to register it. Ironically, abc.xyz is Alphabet's home page.
erpellan
Had real trouble with a .technology TLD a couple of years ago. A large number of major sites (who were big enough to know better) simply refused to accept it as a valid email address. We had to make throwaway accounts to use any of Atlassian's products for a while.
jpatokal
I've been using mylastname.name for a while. Works fine, not well known but easy enough to spell out without getting too many double takes.
asadasad
Been a constant headache, I use a me@asad.co as my email. Have had to explain, far too many times, that it's co not com. There was one case of important official email being sent to asad.com which took weeks to clear up. I give out my school email more often now.
diggan
I have victor.earth and usually sign up with $SERVICE@victor.earth which then redirects to me@victor.earth. But so many websites don't understand that .earth exists, so I still use my @gmail.com from time to time, because of shitty email validations.