Ask HN: Is it ok to use .org domain for commercial startup?
I want to use a .org domain for my startup (I will put some ads and premium services). Is there any legal issue? Or any other aspects that I should consider.
Many folks on the VC-funded trajectory would tell you that there are brandability issues which would counsel you starting on, instead, getBETTERNAME.com or BETTERNAMEapp.com or something and tradition to BETTERNAME.com at any price once you have the ability to do so.
I built a company on a .org and ran it to sale, because the .com would have cost $30k and the .org cost $8.95. I can think of no difference it made over the lifetime of the business; my daughter's college fund, on the other hand, has a very clear view of the delta between the two.
[1] n.b. not true of all TLDs; .gov, .edu, and many of the geography-specific ones have various requirements to be able to use them
A lot of startups use .io, but unless they're located in or are addressing the British Indian Ocean Territory, they should not.
I choose my "providers" taking into account the tld classification. For example, my open source free software projects are hosted on framagit.ORG, not on github.COM. (Well, ok, since people are dumb and they all go to github, I also have clones there, but I expect the commercial github entity to shutdown that service and erase them at any time for any reason their shareholders may have).