Working in domain names industry. Don't forget you never own a domain name, be careful which registry is behind the extension you use. My recommendations would

Working in domain names industry. Don't forget you never own a domain name, be careful which registry is behind the extension you use. My recommendations would be: - don't use a ccTLD (2 characters TLDs) unless it's your country's TLD, or a country you can trust. ccTLDs don't follow the ICANN rules but the rules of the country. As a rule of thumb, keep in mind that the poorest the country is, the less their infrastructure is reliable. If you rent an exotic .so, don't be surprised if it doesn't resolve one day. There's also a risk that you lose eligibility to your domain overnight. Usually ccTLD registries tend to loosen the requirements (.fr used to be only available to French people for example, not the case anymore), but the opposite is possible. UK residents also lost eligibility to .eu after the Brexit. I'd also avoid geoTLDs (.asia, .berlin, .paris, .cat, ...) because of the eligibility rules. - (new)gTLDs are not all reliable either. Stick to the core gTLDs if possible: .com, .net (Verisign, even with their price increase they're probably the most reliable entity), .info (Afilias), .org (PIR, the shady selling deal they had with Ethos Capital has been rejected). There are reliable newgTLDs if you trust the entity behind it: .app/.dev (Google...) for example. I also like [Radix] and [Donuts] as entities. - don't forget to enable autorenew and to keep an up to date payment mean on your registrar. If you want to retrieve a domain name you lost it will either be costly if you're in the redemption period, or extremely costly if its "drop caught" (from "drop catching", not sure if "drop caught" is a thing) and resold on an aftermarket platform. [Radix]: https://ntldstats.com/registry/group/Radix-FZC https://ntldstats.com/registry/group/Radix-FZC [Donuts]: https://ntldstats.com/registry/group/Donuts-Inc https://ntldstats.com/registry/group/Donuts-Inc