@altgate

Picking A Domain Name

Anyone who has recently gone through the process of naming a company surely knows the pain involved in picking a domain (and thus, picking the company name).  The dot-com domain has been picked over for 22 years (the first purchase was Sympolics.com back in March 1985) and thanks to real businesses and domain squaters, there are few viable names left unregistered.  What’s more, the domain squaters are greedier than ever (lowest ask I’ve seen was $30K).

But the show must go on, and recently I’ve been going through a naming processes for my new company.  While we came up with some decent names, we just couldn’t get the "natural" domain to go with it.  As a result, we’ve been looking at non-dot-com domains (like .US, .IS, etc.).  Personally I like these domains, but people I talk to are split about 50/50 as "love it" or "hate it" with the former describing it as avante garde and the latter as cumbersome and hard to remember. 

What do you think?  You can cast your vote on the left and leave a comment below with your rationale.

Interestingly, I’ve found that registering non-dot-com, non-US domains is expensive and tough. For example, .IS (Iceland) costs $400 per year and .GE (former Soviet republic of Georgia) requires the domain be registered by a Georgian resident. I think it is a simple matter of time before businesses begin adopting non-dot-com domains en masse. There are a fixed number of dot-com domains and the need for more domains grows continuously. There’s probably money to be made in buying up non-dot-coms even though I’m sure squatters have already figured that out…

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  • http://blog.jedchristiansen.com Jed Christiansen

    Personally, I think non-dot-com domains are fine. They are a bit unusual right now, but if it fits best with the brand image, then I would say to go for it. As you said, the good dot-com names are being taken, so this is going to be less and less unusual in the coming months/years.

  • http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm apenwarr

    If it’s just squatters you’re worried about, ICANN has an “accelerated dispute policy” that you can use to kick them off your domain… if you hold the trademark in question.
    http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm
    Sure beats $30k.

  • http://www.altgate.com/ FN

    Apenwarr, my understanding is that the issue for startups is that they have no claim to a domain if they cannot demonstrate prior use. I think this dispute policy is meant primarily for existing companies. If I’m wrong on this, I’d love to know because that would be huge!

  • http://www.inspire.com David Greene

    Our founder’s last startup was WorldWeb.net – and he vowed never to have another company where he didn’t have the .com address. Too much confusion, lost business, needless concerns and discussions.
    We changed our web address from ClinicaHealth.com to Inspire.com because – even with the .com address – ClinicaHealth was too confusing for people. They kept going to ClinicalHealth.com (with an l) which is a horrible, horrible site (don’t go there) which downloads payloads and does other nasty things.
    We like Inspire.com because it is easy to remember, easy to spell, short, and we have the .com. Also, the other obvious addresses (.org, etc) aren’t taken by people doing evil things with them.
    There are good .com names available – I’d strongly recommend taking the time and perhaps money needed to get a great domain!