Almost every tld is unavailable and I increasingly see more and more .so and .sh - but wondering if they are market as spam or neglected by prospects more.
.so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
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Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#2Spam and cool. You will be discounted by users/search engines but you will have cache within the industry. Depends on who your customers are: discord users vs facebook group users
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#3Look, at the end of the day, folks might initially give a `.so` or `.sh` the side-eye, questioning its credibility. But if you nail your branding and put real effort into building your reputation, that perception quickly fades away. Once people trust you and your offering, nobody’s going to care about the TLD - just look at Notion.so: everyone links to them, uses them internally, and doesn't bat an eye. In fact, they eventually upgraded to .com - so that door always remains open.
Remember, with any new domain, you're starting from zero anyway; you'll have to build trust from scratch, whether it's a fancy `.com` or a `.so`. Going with something like `.so` or `.sh` just means more choices when the usual suspects are already taken.
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#4Spam and cool. You will be discounted by users/search engines but you will have cache within the industry. Depends on who your customers are: discord users vs facebook group users
> discord users vs facebook group users
Which of thesevis savvier? Serious question. Given a tech worker subset that's analogous to Discord, I'd go for the 40s+ Facebook.
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#5Who cares about domains like shipfast.st or mcp.so? What matters is your product's real value,what pain point does it solve?
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#6One is so.so, the other is sh.it.
Ah, Somalia. Hmm "Limited to institutions and organizations in Somalia, residents of Somalia, others who have a legitimate, clear and provable connection to Somalia"
Unless you live in Somalia, seems like a non-starter.
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#7Just be more creative on your name and use a .com, and don't think about it any more.
I think PG had an article about this (on naming?) a while back...
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#8One is so.so, the other is sh.it. Ah, Somalia. Hmm "Limited to institutions and organizations in Somalia, residents of Somalia, others who have a legitimate, clear and provable connection to Somalia" Unless you live in Somalia, seems like a non-starter.
Even .sh is questionable now that the UK has started just giving away their islands to randos.
Re: .so .sh TLD for startups – pros and cons?
#9We have blocked registration from both these tlds on our website due to fraudulent accounts.