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Ask HN: Do I still need a dot com domain?

50 points by Malfunction92 ↗ HN
I have a couple of projects that are gaining traction, generating revenue, and slowly turning into a full-time job.

Recently, I saw a discussion on whether a dot io domain is really a good domain name for a business, which made me start thinking: do people still view companies running websites with a non-dot com domain to be any less worthy? All my projects run on a dot io domain, and I'm starting to wonder whether this choice would affect my business's creditability.

All my projects are aimed at businesses working in tech.

26 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 74.4 ms ] thread
vikramkr
I think .io is fine for credibility, but you should own the .com to fight phishing. It's a security risk otherwise. Other non dot com domains are definitely less trustworthy, if you have a .co or God forbid a .biz that's not a good look. .io is definitely fine in tech, but do watch out for phishing.
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benbristow
.co is fine, looks quite good to be honest.

.biz is just tacky though. I'd never trust a .biz domain.

.io is good for tech

mindcrime
My subjective perception leads me to believe that it's becoming less important. And for tech-oriented businesses, I think that's even more true. TLD's like .io, .ai, etc are becoming very accepted. In fact, for anything AI related, I'd probably prefer the .ai TLD.

That said, all things being equal, a .com domain is probably still the gold standard in many areas, and if the one for your name is available, and affordable, it wouldn't hurt to have it. You can always redirect traffic one way or the other, to whatever you consider the "main" domain.

superasn
I don't think it matters at all anymore. Even .co is just as good enough.

Also the biggest reason why .com was considered a better alternative before was because of a seo myth that coms rank better. Now from your own experience and dozens of articles that myth too had been debunked.

So imo it really doesn't matter and people remember io just as well.

mattferderer
I slightly disagree with using a '.co'. It's to similar to .com & will result in a lot of typos.

If I couldn't afford the .com I would personally reconsider my name. If that's not an option, using a different TLD is fine, especially if it goes well with your name.

If you use another TLD, do research the TLD first. I recall the .io TLD having issues a few years ago. Now many people avoid it or use it as a joke when referring to questionable TLDs. Someone else could probably give better info on how to research who stands behind the TLD & how much you should trust betting a good chunk of your business on it. If not, just look up old news stories on the .io drama.

paxys
From what I've seen, other TLDs (.co, .io, .ai etc.) are perfectly acceptable nowadays, but more for informational or marketing sites. If the user is going to be spending a lot of time on your site for actual day-to-day usage, I'd still suggest .com.
rememberlenny
One thing to note is that not all TLD will perform the same in email filters.

Especially when it comes to companies with strict email privileges, any TLD that used to be free (ie. .ml) may be filtered out and require a .com mirror. I worked at a startup that realized their emails were being flagged for spam because of the TOD, and it took a while to understand the issue was due to the TLD itself.

eggsome
I work at an Australian med tech company. Multiple US companies block mail from any .au address. A whole country!

And it's not like .au is a spammy TLD; you have to have to register with the government to even get a .au address :(

bananicorn
It's actually quite possible that all they have is a (rather shitty) whitelist...
adventured
For your scenario, if you're exclusively targeting businesses customers, it's not nearly as important. It's a bonus if you have a good dotcom.

If you're a consumer focused company (doesn't sound like any of your projects are), then absolutely get as good of a dotcom address as you can find / afford.

A dotcom is still overwhelmingly the most desirable address, in all regards - if you have a good one. There is still no close second to a good dotcom address.

neya
Personal experience - I tried one of the newer trendy domains, .shop, .store and .<you name it>. My results were underwhelming in marketing campaigns across facebook for E-Commerce related products when I A/B tested the new TLDs vs dot coms. The dot coms won over by a huge margin. My target demographic isn't old, mostly consists of millennials and younger.

The new TLDs are simply just over-hyped and over-priced. For example, some .app domains cost as much as $50. I suggest getting <youridea>app.com vs <youridea>.app.

I also don't recommend .co's in particular since they lead to a lot of typos .com's. Unless you control the .com, .co is a bad idea.

I wasted so much money with these hyped domains so much so that I'm starting to think it's borderline scam. I'll publish a medium article soon-ish.

Maybe they should pay us to use these new TLDs instead.

eli
$50 is cheap if you're comparing it to buying an already registered .com from someone. A .com is definitely the best by far if you can find a name you like unregistered, but it ain't easy.
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epynonymous
fully agree, i used to have an io site, it was trendy at the time, but came at a premium, 99 usd per year, nowdays i just try to find the cheapest i can get that has a reasonable name to it that's easy to remember. i also like the get<appname>.com pattern, because usually domain squatters havent caught onto it yet. my algorithm for domain names is essentially about subverting domain squatters without making the site too cryptic. it's kind of like when delicio.us came out, that was a very big fu to all domain squatters and also l33t because it opened up so many doors for me regarding domain name possibilities.

the user base matters, too, if you're targetting older folks like 50+ then probably .com is a safer bet.

my domain names:

madsportslab.com getsdone.xyz getmathd.com

gorkish
I’m pretty sure most of the revenue on the new TLDs is just corporate customers securing their trademarks or protecting against the squatters or spear phishing/impersonation attacks. I am curious about the returns on the 100k registration fee. IMO these tlds are a fucking terrible idea and I fully expect good security policy to just blanket block most of them within a few years.
ChuckMcM
No you do not need a dot com, but you do need a reliable registrar. Since the domain name is your "storefront" your "corporate HQ" your "main campus" on the Internet, at some point you have to ask how sure are you that resolving your domain name will get you your servers going forward. There is a tremendous amount of security, monitoring, and protective layering around the .com root servers because they serve names that everyone depends on every day. On the 'lesser' domains you get stories like this : https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_tra... which is kind of scary.

Bottom line, from a customer acceptance perspective pretty much any domain name works, but from a corporate longevity perspective you need a TLD that isn't going to get hacked.

supermanfan
You can use almost any TLD for personal projects, though a few have support issues and should be avoided, like .vg.

For business use, some domains are poorly managed, like .io, and the registrar can be taken over or easily DoSed. These would not pass a vendor security audit, so stick with .com.

alchemism
It depends upon your target audience. A .com is still superior for a b2c e-commerce site, especially one that caters to a mainstream/casual audience. For a corporate site there is less reason to stick with .com, especially for anything related to technology.

.io is definitely trendy amongst engineers lately, and even newer domains like Google’s .dev, with high reputation, just appeared this year. Technically-minded audiences will see these as markers of credibility, if anything.

frosted-flakes
This might not apply to you, but if your business is country-specific, consider using the appropriate country code TLD (like .co.uk, .ca, .fi, .ru, etc.). In my experience, people are familiar with them and trust them the same as or more than .com.

For example, in Canada, I'm always a bit hesitant when I land on a .com website (is it USD or CAD?), but a .ca domain tells me I'm at the right place. Especially for multi-national companies like Amazon or The Home Depot.

I wouldn't use .us in the USA though—it doesn't seem to be very common, putting it in the same boat as .biz and all the other new ones. .com seems to be the de facto "US" TLD.

jccalhoun
It depends. If you mean is it more or less credible? I don't think it matters. But, if you mean will people be able to remember it if it isn't a. Co.? Probably not. I teach college courses and sometimes. I will have students go to kahoot.it or a bit.ly and there will be students who go to kahoot.com (which takes you to the log in page for people to make kahoot reviews not play them.) or bit.ly.com or something.
frosted-flakes
No, I don't mean use any ccTLD, I mean use the one for your country.

My point is that outside of the US, the ccTLD is commonly used, so everyone is already familiar with it. Every website that has to do with schools, the government, large businesses, etc. already uses that TLD, which is not the case for the vanity TLDs like .biz or the misappropriated ccTLDs like .io, .ly, or .it.

jaden
> I wouldn't use .us in the USA though—it doesn't seem to be very common, putting it in the same boat as .biz and all the other new ones. .com seems to be the de facto "US" TLD.

Also know that .us doesn't allow whois privacy. It made for an unpleasant surprise when I started getting loads of spam to my whois email address.