8 ms·

I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. Be careful which TLD you rent (you never buy it). If it’s free, it’s a bad deal, just don’t take it. If it’s a

by thiht 4y ago

I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. Be careful which TLD you rent (you never buy it). If it’s free, it’s a bad deal, just don’t take it. If it’s a ccTLD (2 characters) not of your own country, don’t take it. Eligibility rules routinely change and you could get kicked out overnight. UK residents lost eligibility to .eu with Brexit for instance. Be careful with sexy ccTLDs such as .io or .so, they belong to small countries which sometimes don’t have a proper resilient infrastructure, and you expose yourself to more DNS issues. A lot of new gTLDs (ie. tlds other than .com, .net, .org and .info) suck ass and were created by speculators. Be very careful. I would only buy a gTLD managed by Google (.app, .dev), Donuts.inc, or Radix. Most of the other crap is not reliable enough to me. If you can, just stick to .com, .net, or the ccTLD of your country.

animesh 4y ago
I went with a .net domain and am so happy to see this insight.
- thiht 4y ago
  .net might be a bit less sexy than .com but both are managed by Verisign, which is probably the most reliable registry nowadays. They both suffer from the same price increases for the wrong reasons, but you get the peace of mind IMO. Good choice!
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    And it is one of the legacy tlds. Even if the entities managing them go down, someone will likely take over with same rules.
y5y5y5jjjj 4y ago
> buy a gTLD managed by Google (.app, .dev) "Google suspended our domain out of the blue – lyearn[.]com" -> https://twitter.com/shuchit_gandhi/status/1568829269488603139 https://twitter.com/shuchit_gandhi/status/156882926948860313...
- thiht 4y ago
  This story relates to Google Domains, the registrar entity of Google, not the registry entity. I would personally never trust Google as a registrar because they have a horrible track record regarding customer support. As a gTLD registry though, they’re supervised by the ICANN and just cannot afford to make a shitty job there. Being a registry is also, IMHO, way easier than being a registrar, you obey ICANN rules, but you’re the one setting the rules for the registrars. Google as a registry is fine. You’re free to not trust them either as a registry, but that would be for personal convictions, not objective.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Could you maybe expand on what the risks are with registries? When I trust a company to be my gTLD registry, what am I trusting them with? Why is Google safer than e.g. the government of Tuvalu, or some private "speculator", if they all have to follow ICANN rules?
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      ccTLDs do not have to follow ICANN rules. They are treated as sovereign territory of the country they belong to. On a ccTLD the registry can take your domain from you at any moment for any reason.
      - nottorp 4y ago
        While on a com, net, org the US government can take your domain from you at any moment for any reason? Don't see much of a difference there.
        y5y5y5jjjj 4y ago
        alexvoda 4y ago
        Frankly, I would prefer if the USA just used .us (and .com.us, .org.us, .gov.us, etc) as a ccTDL and left .com, .net, .org, etc to be under the supervision of the UN.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ayushnix 4y ago
I was considering registering another domain for my internal services (I already own a .com domain) but I might end up use it as a public domain, not sure yet. The .one TLD came up in the list of cheap TLDs but I'm not sure if I should consider it. I've heard some email providers simply block the new gTLDs.
jstanley 4y ago
> If it’s a ccTLD (2 characters) not of your own country, don’t take it. Eligibility rules routinely change and you could get kicked out overnight. UK residents lost eligibility to .eu with Brexit for instance. But British people were in the EU when they bought their domains. More generally, even if you pick a ccTLD of a country that you live in, how are you supposed to predict whether your specific area will split off and become a separate country? I think ideally in those cases the people running the Internet infrastructure should be compassionate rather than spiteful, and just let you keep your old domain even if they won't let you register new ones. But that's obviously not what happens.
- thiht 4y ago
  The EU was spiteful in this case, but that was expected. To be fair, they gave British registrants at least 1 year of grace period to migrate their domains to a new TLD, it didn’t happen overnight in this case.
  - noAnswer 4y ago
    Lets see what will happen to Scottish .uk domains when they leave.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    .EU domains were always restricted to entities in the EEA. I don't know how useful that is in practise, but it's not the only CCTLD with this restriction.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    > The EU was spiteful in this case That logic defies description. If you are not a member of a certain country or economic zone, you cannot get and keep that zone's exclusive domains. Thats law. What you are saying is that the Eu should have made an exception for the Brits and allowed them to keep doing what others are not allowed. That sounds like too much exceptionalist entitlement.
    - _0w8t 4y ago
kfarr 4y ago
Yes learned this the hard way with 3d.st . The operators of the .st domain were somehow affected by "force majeure" timed coincidentally around new sanctions on Russia. Essentially the country-approved TLD operator no longer responded to support requests for months. We switched to .org instead
gist 4y ago
> I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. Be careful which TLD you rent (you never buy it). Speaking specifically about .com/org/net/info I would not use either the word 'rent' or 'own' strictly but defacto you own the domain if you continue to pay the really nominal fees every year for renewal with the registrar you choose. That is an entire topic in itself because different registrars have different policies subject to (again for those tld's) ICANN rules. As such you 'own' the rights to the domain name (same as google, amazon, tesla etc) in the sense that you can sell those rights to someone else if you want or transfer them. You can think of domain ownership similar to physical real estate where there are property taxes you pay. There are a limited set of circumstances where you can lose the property (don't pay property tax, eminent domain etc) but you don't think you are renting (other than if you are renting). Now for other things you own there is no annual fee you pay.
irrational 4y ago
> If it’s free, it’s a bad deal, just don’t take it. Can you speak more to this? I am using a free domain for my GitHub pages site. This is not an e-commerce site, it’s just some notes and random stuff. Are there any downsides to using a free domain in my case?
- dzek69 4y ago
  Domains like .tk will be pushed down in Google results, you will have issues when you will try to send mails from such domain, etc. If something is free and attractive it's usually abused. If you don't care about such things and you can easily move to another domain without any issues (people still accessing old domain, maybe finding a scammy website after domain is being taken from you, your mails no longer being delivered to you) then go for it.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    I think he meant the free suvdlmain the comes with GitHub pages, xxx.GitHub.io
    - irrational 4y ago
      No, you can use a domain address you have gotten elsewhere and have it resolve to your GitHub pages. I’ve been doing this for awhile and have never paid a penny.
unity1001 4y ago
> I would only buy a gTLD managed by Google Google? Who has a grotesque history of shutting stuff down on people's faces because a collection of execs decided so?
- talideon 4y ago
  They have to follow ICANN rules for registry operators, just like everyone else. Google can't simply shut down their registry operations: management would be moved to another registry operator.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Isn’t this analogous to the problem where control of governments change, and the new registry operator can have arbitrarily bad rules / prices?
- thiht 4y ago
  I gave a relevant answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799919 Google Registry is not just any user facing product they can shutdown whenever they want. I have no issue renting a .app or a .dev, but I'd never use Google Domains for that.
ryan29 4y ago
I found a pretty good .com a few years ago and this is basically the conclusion I came to when I was trying to decide which matching TLDs to register and which ones are safe to use. I’m from Canada, so I used the ccTLD for all of my non-public stuff. CIRA seems to be well run. I was really frustrated by the trendy TLDs, especially the ccTLDs. I felt like I had to register those because anyone willing to use (ex:) .io probably has a high enough risk tolerance they’ll use the name without even considering existing trademarks, etc.. The .io and .co domains are the most frustrating because they’re more expensive than the others. So I would say relying on .com, .net, and your ccTLD is great advice in terms of TLDs to use, but don’t hesitate to register some of the trendier ones for brand protection because it’s the cheapest thing you can do to discourage others from using the same name.
teddyh 4y ago
> I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. More than 10 years here. I agree with you, except I would go further and simply recommend against any other weird gTLDs at all. Stick with your national ccTLD unless it is managed by utter incompetents, in which case you have fallbacks like .eu for EU nationals, and .com, .net, .org and .info for the rest. Going back to the original question, .info seems cheapest of the reasonable TLDs (when registering for 10 years).
- derefr 4y ago
  > Stick with your national ccTLD unless it is managed by utter incompetents, in which case you have fallbacks like .eu for EU nationals, and .com, .net, .org and .info for the rest. Disregarding the price factor for a moment, would you still prioritize "your own country's ccTLD" over .com, when registering web presence for a company with no particular local presence in its home country? I.e. should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com? For that matter, does your advice apply to .us?
  - thiht 4y ago
    > should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com? In this case it doesn't matter in terms of reliability. If you target the US, maybe go with .com, unless .ca brings something (if it's a pun, or if you want to highlight the fact you're a Canadian company). Also consider the fact that the country's ccTLD is not popular in every country. In France the .fr is very popular for example, but it's not the case everywhere. I'm not sure the .us is very popular in the us for example, is it?
    - DeathMetal3000 4y ago
      I don’t believe .us is very popular.
      - Flimm 4y ago
        It's not. Also, WHOIS privacy is banned for .us domains, unlike .com domains.
TheFreim 4y ago
> If it’s a ccTLD (2 characters) not of your own country, don’t take it. Eligibility rules routinely change and you could get kicked out overnight. One of my domains uses the .ch TLD, from Switzerland, I use it for many account registrations via email. Should I be worried that I will lose access and proactively migrate away from this domain?
- cpach 4y ago
  .ch is owned by a foundation called “SWITCH”. If you trust them, it’s fine. I would guess they’ll be around for a while. https://www.switch.ch/about/foundation/ https://www.switch.ch/about/foundation/
  - thiht 4y ago
    > .ch is owned by a foundation called “SWITCH”. That's not entirely true. What happens for ccTLDs is that they're owned by the government, and administrative and technical management of the extension is delegated to a foundation/association. In the example of France (I'm French so I know it best), the .fr has been managed by the Afnic historically, but it's renewed every few years (5 I think?) by the government. Last time was 2021. In the case of ccTLDs you need to trust the associated government no matter what, more than the delegated registry.
    - cpach 4y ago
      Yes, good point.
- thiht 4y ago
  It depends on the criticity of your domain. Although it's unlikely to happen, Switzerland could decide on a whim to restrict access to .ch to Swiss residents or nationals. My guess is it's very unlikely with Switzerland but who knows? You can judge on the likeliness of that for yourself and act on it accordingly. Realistically I think you're fine sticking with .ch, but consider one of the original gTLDs for future use (com, net, info, org)
- dasyatidprime 4y ago
rmuratov 4y ago
I rent .space domain and use it for my email. Can please tell what could go wrong with it?
- thiht 4y ago
  .space is managed by Radix, one of the entities I would consider reliable enough for a newGTLD. For weird newGTLD the worst that can happen is the registry goes bankrupt and their TLDs are not saved by the ICANN or bought by another registry. In this case you'd lose the domain. IMO it's unlikely to happen to Radix.
FunnyBadger 4y ago
Definitely agree. The one I co-own is an old-school .com domain. Probably still the best. If costs are your critical issue, maybe you should re-think your plans for having any of it online. We are not talking about a lot of money in any case.

by thiht 4y ago

animesh 4y ago

I went with a .net domain and am so happy to see this insight.

thiht 4y ago
.net might be a bit less sexy than .com but both are managed by Verisign, which is probably the most reliable registry nowadays. They both suffer from the same price increases for the wrong reasons, but you get the peace of mind IMO. Good choice!
- Ekaros 4y ago
  And it is one of the legacy tlds. Even if the entities managing them go down, someone will likely take over with same rules.

y5y5y5jjjj 4y ago

> buy a gTLD managed by Google (.app, .dev) "Google suspended our domain out of the blue – lyearn[.]com" -> https://twitter.com/shuchit_gandhi/status/1568829269488603139 https://twitter.com/shuchit_gandhi/status/156882926948860313...

thiht 4y ago
This story relates to Google Domains, the registrar entity of Google, not the registry entity. I would personally never trust Google as a registrar because they have a horrible track record regarding customer support. As a gTLD registry though, they’re supervised by the ICANN and just cannot afford to make a shitty job there. Being a registry is also, IMHO, way easier than being a registrar, you obey ICANN rules, but you’re the one setting the rules for the registrars. Google as a registry is fine. You’re free to not trust them either as a registry, but that would be for personal convictions, not objective.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Could you maybe expand on what the risks are with registries? When I trust a company to be my gTLD registry, what am I trusting them with? Why is Google safer than e.g. the government of Tuvalu, or some private "speculator", if they all have to follow ICANN rules?
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    ccTLDs do not have to follow ICANN rules. They are treated as sovereign territory of the country they belong to. On a ccTLD the registry can take your domain from you at any moment for any reason.
    - nottorp 4y ago
      While on a com, net, org the US government can take your domain from you at any moment for any reason? Don't see much of a difference there.
      - y5y5y5jjjj 4y ago
      - alexvoda 4y ago
        Frankly, I would prefer if the USA just used .us (and .com.us, .org.us, .gov.us, etc) as a ccTDL and left .com, .net, .org, etc to be under the supervision of the UN.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ayushnix 4y ago

I was considering registering another domain for my internal services (I already own a .com domain) but I might end up use it as a public domain, not sure yet. The .one TLD came up in the list of cheap TLDs but I'm not sure if I should consider it. I've heard some email providers simply block the new gTLDs.

jstanley 4y ago

> If it’s a ccTLD (2 characters) not of your own country, don’t take it. Eligibility rules routinely change and you could get kicked out overnight. UK residents lost eligibility to .eu with Brexit for instance. But British people were in the EU when they bought their domains. More generally, even if you pick a ccTLD of a country that you live in, how are you supposed to predict whether your specific area will split off and become a separate country? I think ideally in those cases the people running the Internet infrastructure should be compassionate rather than spiteful, and just let you keep your old domain even if they won't let you register new ones. But that's obviously not what happens.

thiht 4y ago
The EU was spiteful in this case, but that was expected. To be fair, they gave British registrants at least 1 year of grace period to migrate their domains to a new TLD, it didn’t happen overnight in this case.
- noAnswer 4y ago
  Lets see what will happen to Scottish .uk domains when they leave.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  .EU domains were always restricted to entities in the EEA. I don't know how useful that is in practise, but it's not the only CCTLD with this restriction.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > The EU was spiteful in this case That logic defies description. If you are not a member of a certain country or economic zone, you cannot get and keep that zone's exclusive domains. Thats law. What you are saying is that the Eu should have made an exception for the Brits and allowed them to keep doing what others are not allowed. That sounds like too much exceptionalist entitlement.
  - _0w8t 4y ago

kfarr 4y ago

Yes learned this the hard way with 3d.st . The operators of the .st domain were somehow affected by "force majeure" timed coincidentally around new sanctions on Russia. Essentially the country-approved TLD operator no longer responded to support requests for months. We switched to .org instead

gist 4y ago

> I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. Be careful which TLD you rent (you never buy it). Speaking specifically about .com/org/net/info I would not use either the word 'rent' or 'own' strictly but defacto you own the domain if you continue to pay the really nominal fees every year for renewal with the registrar you choose. That is an entire topic in itself because different registrars have different policies subject to (again for those tld's) ICANN rules. As such you 'own' the rights to the domain name (same as google, amazon, tesla etc) in the sense that you can sell those rights to someone else if you want or transfer them. You can think of domain ownership similar to physical real estate where there are property taxes you pay. There are a limited set of circumstances where you can lose the property (don't pay property tax, eminent domain etc) but you don't think you are renting (other than if you are renting). Now for other things you own there is no annual fee you pay.

irrational 4y ago

> If it’s free, it’s a bad deal, just don’t take it. Can you speak more to this? I am using a free domain for my GitHub pages site. This is not an e-commerce site, it’s just some notes and random stuff. Are there any downsides to using a free domain in my case?

dzek69 4y ago
Domains like .tk will be pushed down in Google results, you will have issues when you will try to send mails from such domain, etc. If something is free and attractive it's usually abused. If you don't care about such things and you can easily move to another domain without any issues (people still accessing old domain, maybe finding a scammy website after domain is being taken from you, your mails no longer being delivered to you) then go for it.
- jacooper 4y ago
  I think he meant the free suvdlmain the comes with GitHub pages, xxx.GitHub.io
  - irrational 4y ago
    No, you can use a domain address you have gotten elsewhere and have it resolve to your GitHub pages. I’ve been doing this for awhile and have never paid a penny.

unity1001 4y ago

> I would only buy a gTLD managed by Google Google? Who has a grotesque history of shutting stuff down on people's faces because a collection of execs decided so?

talideon 4y ago
They have to follow ICANN rules for registry operators, just like everyone else. Google can't simply shut down their registry operations: management would be moved to another registry operator.
- hedora 4y ago
  Isn’t this analogous to the problem where control of governments change, and the new registry operator can have arbitrarily bad rules / prices?
thiht 4y ago
I gave a relevant answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799919 Google Registry is not just any user facing product they can shutdown whenever they want. I have no issue renting a .app or a .dev, but I'd never use Google Domains for that.

ryan29 4y ago

I found a pretty good .com a few years ago and this is basically the conclusion I came to when I was trying to decide which matching TLDs to register and which ones are safe to use. I’m from Canada, so I used the ccTLD for all of my non-public stuff. CIRA seems to be well run. I was really frustrated by the trendy TLDs, especially the ccTLDs. I felt like I had to register those because anyone willing to use (ex:) .io probably has a high enough risk tolerance they’ll use the name without even considering existing trademarks, etc.. The .io and .co domains are the most frustrating because they’re more expensive than the others. So I would say relying on .com, .net, and your ccTLD is great advice in terms of TLDs to use, but don’t hesitate to register some of the trendier ones for brand protection because it’s the cheapest thing you can do to discourage others from using the same name.

teddyh 4y ago

> I worked in the domain name industry for 4 years. More than 10 years here. I agree with you, except I would go further and simply recommend against any other weird gTLDs at all. Stick with your national ccTLD unless it is managed by utter incompetents, in which case you have fallbacks like .eu for EU nationals, and .com, .net, .org and .info for the rest. Going back to the original question, .info seems cheapest of the reasonable TLDs (when registering for 10 years).

derefr 4y ago
> Stick with your national ccTLD unless it is managed by utter incompetents, in which case you have fallbacks like .eu for EU nationals, and .com, .net, .org and .info for the rest. Disregarding the price factor for a moment, would you still prioritize "your own country's ccTLD" over .com, when registering web presence for a company with no particular local presence in its home country? I.e. should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com? For that matter, does your advice apply to .us?
- thiht 4y ago
  > should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com? In this case it doesn't matter in terms of reliability. If you target the US, maybe go with .com, unless .ca brings something (if it's a pun, or if you want to highlight the fact you're a Canadian company). Also consider the fact that the country's ccTLD is not popular in every country. In France the .fr is very popular for example, but it's not the case everywhere. I'm not sure the .us is very popular in the us for example, is it?
  - DeathMetal3000 4y ago
    I don’t believe .us is very popular.
    - Flimm 4y ago
      It's not. Also, WHOIS privacy is banned for .us domains, unlike .com domains.

TheFreim 4y ago

> If it’s a ccTLD (2 characters) not of your own country, don’t take it. Eligibility rules routinely change and you could get kicked out overnight. One of my domains uses the .ch TLD, from Switzerland, I use it for many account registrations via email. Should I be worried that I will lose access and proactively migrate away from this domain?

cpach 4y ago
.ch is owned by a foundation called “SWITCH”. If you trust them, it’s fine. I would guess they’ll be around for a while. https://www.switch.ch/about/foundation/ https://www.switch.ch/about/foundation/
- thiht 4y ago
  > .ch is owned by a foundation called “SWITCH”. That's not entirely true. What happens for ccTLDs is that they're owned by the government, and administrative and technical management of the extension is delegated to a foundation/association. In the example of France (I'm French so I know it best), the .fr has been managed by the Afnic historically, but it's renewed every few years (5 I think?) by the government. Last time was 2021. In the case of ccTLDs you need to trust the associated government no matter what, more than the delegated registry.
  - cpach 4y ago
    Yes, good point.
thiht 4y ago
It depends on the criticity of your domain. Although it's unlikely to happen, Switzerland could decide on a whim to restrict access to .ch to Swiss residents or nationals. My guess is it's very unlikely with Switzerland but who knows? You can judge on the likeliness of that for yourself and act on it accordingly. Realistically I think you're fine sticking with .ch, but consider one of the original gTLDs for future use (com, net, info, org)
dasyatidprime 4y ago

rmuratov 4y ago

I rent .space domain and use it for my email. Can please tell what could go wrong with it?

thiht 4y ago
.space is managed by Radix, one of the entities I would consider reliable enough for a newGTLD. For weird newGTLD the worst that can happen is the registry goes bankrupt and their TLDs are not saved by the ICANN or bought by another registry. In this case you'd lose the domain. IMO it's unlikely to happen to Radix.

FunnyBadger 4y ago

Definitely agree. The one I co-own is an old-school .com domain. Probably still the best. If costs are your critical issue, maybe you should re-think your plans for having any of it online. We are not talking about a lot of money in any case.