Should Your Startup Use .com, .io, or .co? An Honest Breakdown

The Decision That Keeps Founders Up at Night

You've got a great product name, but yourname.com is taken and costs $15,000 on Sedo. Your options: wait and save, use yourname.io, or get creative with a different .com.

Here's our honest assessment after watching hundreds of startups navigate this.

.com: Still the Default

.com is the global default for a reason. It's what people type automatically. When you say your company name out loud, people assume .com. If your .io site is yourname.io and someone types yourname.com, they go to a competitor or a parked page.

The .com tax is real. Many startups end up buying their .com later, often from a domain squatter, at 10–50x what it would have cost at registration. Plan for this.

.io: The Tech Startup Default

.io became the second-choice TLD for tech startups around 2012–2015. It's now so strongly associated with software and developer tools that it has genuine branding value in that context.

The honest truth: .io domains work fine for B2B SaaS, developer tools, and tech products where your audience is other tech people. They work less well for consumer products, where .com bias is strongest.

Practical issue: .io domains cost 3–4x more than .com ($30–60/year vs $9–15/year). That adds up across a portfolio.

Ethical note: .io is the country code for the British Indian Ocean Territory, and there have been debates about whether tech companies should be using it given the disputed status of that territory. This matters to some audiences.

.co: The Acceptable Compromise

.co (Colombia's ccTLD, adopted globally) is a reasonable compromise. It's short, memorable, and the similarity to .com is a feature for some (your brand sounds like it could be a .com) and a bug for others (people mistype yourname.com instead of yourname.co).

Companies like Twitter (t.co), AngelList, and Overstock (o.co) used .co effectively.

.ai: The Current Trend

.ai (Anguilla's ccTLD) is having a moment because of the AI industry boom. If you're building an AI product, yourname.ai has genuine branding value right now. Prices reflect this: $70–100/year is common.

The Right Framework

Ask three questions:

1. Who is your customer? B2B tech buyers are TLD-agnostic. Consumers heavily favour .com. 2. What's your budget for the .com later? If you can't buy it now, factor in the cost of acquiring it in 3–5 years. 3. Is the .com alternative (different name) better than the .io? Often a different, available .com is better than your preferred name on .io.

Our Recommendation

If you can get a clean .com under $1,000: do it. If you're building a B2B tech product: .io or .ai are fine. If you're building consumer products: hold out for a .com or get creative with a different name.

Never launch a consumer product on .xyz or .online. The credibility gap is real.