Ask HN: Non .com .tld for project website

It genuinely doesn't matter anymore. All mine lately have been .xyz you can get them for like $1 a year from porkbun.com.

.io .ai

These are the only other ones I would consider

.net

Or the tld of your country if possible (e.g., .de for Germany, .fr for France, etc.)

Name or hyphenated-name dot org or dot space if usage terms match?

Just pick something that won't get you sued and move forward with what matters.

At best, this is premature optimization. If and when the project is wildly successful, you can change the name should it really matter.

In the average case, "good domain name" is a means to invent an non-problem to work on so as to avoid working on the hard problem.

What I mean is that the time it takes to read this comment is more time than should be devoted to finding a domain name for a project that doesn't have the financial wherewithal to outsource the problem to branding experts and purchase whatever domain the experts recommend.

Good luck.

.cloud is an option too if appropriate.

Simple opinionated answer: .io and .so

A decade ago .io meant you were trendy and in tech, now it means you’re in tech.

Today .so means you’re trendy and in tech.

There are now many new tlds of which one might fit the subject domain of your project/saas/tool. Though specifically targeted at it/tech people, I created an informational site using .info and a colleague created one to help people with a difficult aspect using .help

I like .net, I think it's underrated and the domains usually undervalued relative to other TLDs.

Only tangentially related, I'd warn against .icu, .xyz, .tk, .online, and if you aren't doing business in these regions, domains associated with russia, ukraine, china, singapore, taiwan, bangladesh, zimbawe, and south africa. Many problem sites have been hosted on these domains, and blocking them is such an effective mitigation strategy it's surprisingly common.

It can be difficult to for example send emails from these tlds, and firewalls may block your site as harmful, search engines will ignore you or penalize your ranking, etc.

consider prefixes and suffixes to your desired name

getSAAS.com

SAASapp.com

consider plural or singular to your desired name

also ask ChatGPT if you don’t mind the data mining, theyre not going to register your project

I’ve done that with domain names and monetized a viral campaign in a week, i didnt pick a brand name until i had the domain name

but I’m probably not your target audience and I would never need an email from you to close a sale but I see

.io, .dev, .xyz, .wtf, .finance employed alot. if you do those, still register a .com for the transactional emails

Personally, I wouldn't register any TLD that costs over $20/year for a side project.

Haven’t seen it mentioned yet but .app appeals to me more than something like .io these days (it at least seems like a safer TLD than the latter).

I like .orgs.

I feel they convey a sense of trustworthiness and they're being slept on by commercial projects.

I've used .org and .net with success.

Used .app recently. I prefer this to .io, .so, etc. People are familiar with the term app. Not so mysterious.

All have ranked fine by Google.