Ask HN: TLD Recommendation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: TLD Recommendation?

6 pointsrrgok7 comments

I don't know how to formulate correctly this question. I'll try.

Mail in a box (Miab) suggests [0] some good TLD and some bad TLD. This is not to bash on Miab. But to understand from where these suggestion comes from. I own some names with cx, ninja, run and some others. Why would be bad to have a custom domain email address that doesn't belong to the good list of Miab (or any other domain...)?

I was planning to make some personal (and work) email addresses with those cheap domains and fastmail (or some other hosting), but now I'm not sure about it.

Any particular reason?

[0] https://mailinabox.email/guide.html

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I do not have a specific answer for you but I can give a generalized one. Avoid at all costs the domains that historically had the least costs. Spammers pick up the cheap/free domains and their TLD's gain a very bad reputation. Spamhaus [1] has a list of the most abused top level domains. Avoid those at very least.

[1] - https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/

My two cents running a small to mid-sized email server service.

I do have a global block list based on certain gTLDs.

The list isn't one chosen at random based on the long list of gTLDs out there, but based on real time feedback from my honeypots, and my customer feedback reports, so SPAM getting through the other filtering techniques in use, usually with zero false positives on them.

Many of the gTLDs that are abused the most are ones that had fire sales in the past to get them off the ground.

As mentioned in other replies, .xyz is a SPAMers wasteland. That one would cause the most difficulty getting through anything.

The others that made my block list are probably not ones you would guess.

So, I wouldn't be too worried about things in general. None of the large providers do blocking on gTLD. Only a few smaller ones do. If the domain was sold for $1 getting-off-the-ground, it could have been picked up by the SPAMers cheaply for quick turnaround and abuse.

I don't understand that rather opinionated list, especially since they give no reasons.

Simply avoid gTLDs, they might close with little notice and are known to increase prices drastically. The OG gTLDs (com/net/org) and ccTLDs are the safest bet.

Most/all? gTLDs should have contracts with ICANN that require a business continuity plan and require price stability for existing domains. On the other hand, ccTLDs are subject only to national authorities. Stability of a ccTLD is strongly related to stability of the administration of the country; but they may add a presence requirement without being particularly unstable, and like .eu is problematic because it requires presence which seemed like a good bet for people in the UK ten years ago, but it wasn't. In an ideal world, you wouldn't ever be forced to change your domain name, but if you're not careful, you might be.

Personally, I'd go for com/net/org, a ccTLD you have a strong connection to, or at least seems pretty stable (i do have a .is, which seems likely stable, it's on the linked article's bad list, but only because they have strong technical requirements, but I found them relatively easy to manage)

Avoid free/ultra low cost tlds, as they'll have poor reputation from spammers. Avoid .info because eww. Avoid newer gtlds because some sites may not have updated their tld lists and might not believe your email address is valid; but do use them if the domain is perfect.

Don't they go around the price stability by simply offering a substantial discount on the first year(s) of registration? Anyways, I put more trust in the Dutch gov. than some Dotstrategy Inc.

"only because they have strong technical requirements" And that would hopefully also suggest that they have the same standards for their own DNS infrastructure. Should be counted as a positive, not a negative on that list.

.xyz are very bad tld for email or even hosting. So much that you cannot even send domains with that tld as a text message to certain users in the US. E.g. TMobile blocks all reference to .xyz domains if sent as a text message .

I have been using a .email TLD with protonmail and haven't had any issues.

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