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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Any perspective on the best TLDs for startups?

.com is obviously the preferred choice, but from my perspective these are the next best picks:

- .io for B2B, SAAS, etc. startups. Occasionally makes sense for B2C (itch.io, etc.) Seems to be falling out of fashion, though.

- .ai is the top choice for ML-based startups. These are really hot now.

- .dev for the occasional SAAS or library. Doesn't make sense B2C.

- .app if you're linking to a mobile app or have a SPA-like functionality. Not super popular, though.

AFAIK, the other TLDs seem like spam/noise. That might just be personal perception and I could be totally wrong. Am I missing anything?

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Isn't that mostly a risk and marketing question? How seriously can you expect the TLD to be managed in the future and what do you want to communicate.

My own personal bias makes me a bit wary of "novelty" TLDs since you can't really know how they will be managed in the future. Would you use a banking service that has a novelty domain? Perhaps not. Would you use a piece of software that is hosted on the same TLD? Probably.

I have no idea if my own personal bias is shared by any significant portion of the internet population. Nor do I think my bias is consistent (for instance I can't really decide if ".io" is a novelty/fad TLD or not. Some days I think it is).

Anything other than .com, .org, .net, you're basically at the mercy of the owner who owns that domain extension. They can price-gouge at will.

Pure opinion here but the .tech tld seems a good choice as well. I've used it.

And the business specific TLDs are probably good. I know someone who recently launched with the .financial (which I don't like as it's too long)..

Not for a startup, but .codes is pretty nice for personal or portfolio websites.

My personal website uses .one

I used that TLD for word play on vocoder with https://vo.codes

Ha, this is great. I cracked up at the SpongeBob ones.

This is basically treating the TLD like the next buzzword, but in the end: does this have any practical effect apart from being cool in the eye of the owner? I mean I've been there and done that, but all things considered it doesn't actually seem to matter - there's still the domain as well. Though I might be missing something.

I remember YC's general rule of thumb. If your customers / users are consumers then you need .com.

Otherwise for SaaS for B2B it doesn't matter as much ( if at all ).

I've been falling back on .app because they're relatively affordable, there are still a lot of names left on that TLD, and I do happen to build websites which are more like PWAs or SPAs.

I'd steer clear of .icu. They've had such quality problems that it's not uncommon to see them completely blocked in mail filters and the like.

ICU is very strongly tied to "Intensive Care Unit" for me.

I thought it was synonymous with the Unicode library for any sysadmin, db admin, or C/C++ programmer: https://icu.unicode.org/

.so and .co are popular when .io and .ai are taken.

Somalia? Isn't there a risk of the government collapsing (further)?

Though British Indian Ocean Territory has a risk of the territory disappearing. Colombia and Anguilla should stay around.

The domains at this point aren't really tied to the goverment.

I think ".co" doesn't look too awful and most people "get it." If it's a B-to-B you have more flexibility

I wouldn't want a .co if I didn't also own the .com variant, though.

Considering using the ".tech" TLD for my future projects

The stupidity of thinking what "the best TLD for your startup" is.

In the meantime all respectable startups and big companies use .com like normal people.

That's an odd comment to me. Different TLDs have different pricing, different restrictions, and so on. Giving the topic some thought isn't stupid. And .com is a pretty crowded namespace.

>different pricing

.com is the cheapest

>different restrictions

.com has the fewest

Anything else?

>.com is the cheapest

It isn't, either for initial purchase or renewal, and that's pretty easy to verify.

>>different restrictions - .com has the fewest

How so?

Country code TLDs (ccTLDs) [1] often have rules set by the country of origin. These rules vary widely, but some of them include country of residency requirements (you can't buy as a foreigner), ban on pornography, or strict adherence to religious requirements.

Popular domain hack ccTLD .ly is required to adhere to Libyan and Islamic/Sharia Law [2]

(edit because my posting is rate limited: )

There are plenty of non-ccTLDs, though, including thousands of gTLDs.

You can register a .horse domain if you want, and as far as I know, there are no restrictions on use.

You just need to research what you're buying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly

Yes, but singling out .com as if it were the only non ccTLD doesn't make sense.

Ah yes, branding is "stupid" now. Gotcha.

I think the GPs point is that anything other than .com is stupid branding. Not that branding is stupid.

Likely because 'respectable startups' (with money) can afford to buy the .com.

https://www.arbo.works/ is a new, and very respected startup. They don't have a .com (yet).

Discord couldn't afford to buy discord.com, so they bought discordapp.com. They didn't think of buying discord.io or discord.app or some crap like that.

yeah, and that's the reason why most of them have stupid names

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