Ask HN: *app.com or *.co? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: app.com or .co?

8 pointsdomainaway12 comments

Hi HNers,

Brief scenario: Planning to launch an app and I've landed on a very apt name. The .com is taken and the registrant isn't responding to e-mails (even to a reasonable offer) at all. The domain has been parked for years. The app is going to be web + ios + android. I am going ahead with the same base name of the app, and have 2 choices to use the webapp domain:

(1) append "app" to the name and make a .com [name]app.com

(2) make a .co. [name].co

Thoughts? I've gone through the round of "Let's not focus on only this name, let's try to find others" and finally got back to the name because it's so apt to convey the app's meaning to non-technical audience.

Thanks.

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There's been plenty of startups that launched with bad domain names but wound up hits. thefacebook.com, getdropbox.com to name a couple.

Going the appname+app.com route you are quite literally signing up to work for the guy that owns appname.com. Think about it. Some day you will be paying him a huge cash sum for simply squatting on your name. Some day you may come to find he doesn't want to sell it ever, and will happily take advantage of this. Are you okay with either of these scenarios? I certainly am not.

Ideally you want one or two short dictionary words in a .com format, but all of those are taken. So what do you do?

IMO, the best option is uniquelySpelledName.com, no prefixes or suffixes, no non-.com domain names. Preferably it's short, 5-8 characters. People can only remember 7 or so new things at a time without much effort.

Ex: Your startup name is coolhats, but coolhats.com is obviously taken. Fine, register KewlHatz.com. Done deal. Memorable. Unique.

Why no alternate TLDs? Because they don't pass the grandma test. It's too much to remember. Your company ends up being "Foo Bar Co, withouot the m. Not .com, but .co" or "Foo Bar dot eye oh, <explanation>" ... grandma ain't gonna be remembering any of that.

Think about this. Do you really want to be explaining something as simple as your web address over and over again? I don't.

HTH

I agree. Dont be too attached to your name that is taken. Chances are its really not as memorable as you think. Spend more time and think of another one.

.com

Undisputed king. Anything else is a noise. Come up with creative .com brand name that is not taken.

I should have just upvoted this. Oh well.

Yep. In my experience anything .co people will just think is .com causing confusion. I will never buy another .co domain and would not recommend any buy one unless it is a word like flamen.co

Do some a/b testing with friends and family. Not just "what is better". I believe there is survey templates for this kind of stuff. Does it sounds legit? *App makes it harder to pronounce? Use it as a verb? I do not think there is a universal answer even if you can disclose the name.

PG wrote this 2 years ago. I think you should read it:

http://paulgraham.com/name.html

Does you name have or can be played out on the new TLDs that ICANN just allowed?

We built a game called Virtual StockXchange but we had a hard time coming up with a domain name for it. Everything was either taken or too long. So we tweaked the name a bit, made it Virtual Stock Guru and got the vstock.guru domain. Recognizable and remember-able enough and not easy to be mistaken with .co/.com domains.

I'd say, go for .io if it's a developer-centric product, else .com undoubtedly.

I've been using https://instantdomainsearch.com (no affiliation, just a happy user) for years to find great domain names.

Good luck!

Why not register both? You can A/b test them and see if one converts better. This way you don't have to worry about someone scooping up one of them if you get popular.

I think .co is too similar to .com. I would just go with the +app version. Or, a lot of startups are using .io these days. That's what I did and I'm happy with it.

Why not .io ?

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