Start on a short word, buy the .com later

Say it, spell it, let someone find it

Every naming adviser gives this test. Say the name to someone who has never seen it written. Half an hour later, ask them to find it. As soon as they have to ask for the spelling or the ending, that name has lost you a visitor.

Three things make a name fail the test. The first is a clever spelling that drops or swaps a letter to make the .com free: the listener types the real word. The second is a word that sounds like another word. The third is an ending the listener has never heard, because people remember the ending together with the word and fill in .com when they are unsure.

The name people say must be the address. Supply moved from GetSupply.com to Supply.co, as Elliot Silver, an investor who writes, reported on DomainInvesting on 16 October 2019. Supply's founder had sat on the decision for two years, and wrote that whatever the move cost in search ranking, it was worth no longer being called Get Supply.

1. 1Say the name out loud to three people, with no screen. Ask each of them to write down the address the way they would type it.
2. 2Read the answers. A wrong letter is a spelling problem. A .com where you meant .io is the ending problem, which the rest of this chapter covers.

Who accepts which ending

Among developers, startups and software buyers, .io, .ai, .app and .dev pass as working brands, and the record of funded startups shows it. On 1 November 2026 we read Y Combinator's public list of companies. Among the companies of 2005 to 2016, 88% were on .com. Among those of 2025 and 2026, the share had fallen to 47%.

The ending that replaced .com is .ai, which went from 1% to 29% over the same span. Building on .io was the habit of 2015 to 2022: its share peaked near 10% and now sits at 2 to 5%. Through all of these changes, 62% of the newest companies hold their exact name on some ending. Founders keep the word and change the ending.

Consumers and anyone who handles money still type .com, and so do the large companies a startup wants as clients. Eliza, an AI startup, soft-launched on .ai and had trouble getting its email through some corporate firewalls, Andrew Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 20 November 2025.

Eliza's fallback was eliza.io. The company bought Eliza.com at an undisclosed price, because the .com signals an established business to the Fortune 500 clients it wants.

The ending buys you no search ranking. Google's search documentation listed .ai, .co, .io and .me in 2025 among the country endings it treats as worldwide ones. Google's search team gave one caution in September 2025: avoid the cheapest endings, where spam is dense and email can be dropped.

Leakage: where your visitors and your email go

LeakageLeakageVisitors and email that reach the same word on another ending, usually the .com, because people typed the ending they know.Read the definition is the trade's word for what the out-loud test predicts. Some of the people who hear your name type the word, add .com, and land on whoever holds it. An unused, parked page sends them back to search. A competitor keeps them.

Email leaks the same way and hurts more. Messages meant for the owners of .org and .co.uk addresses landed in the .com inboxes of Andrew Allemann, who wrote about it on Domain Name Wire on 13 June 2017. That misdirected mail included a follow-up proposal from a company that later asked why nobody had answered.

A lost visitor searches again. A lost email can be a deal that nobody knows was lost. That may be why, Allemann wrote, DXC Technology kept its email on a .com in 2017 while its website sat on .technology.

The leak grows with you. Lovable launched on lovable.dev. Visitors who typed lovable.com had been reaching a lingerie store, Allemann reported on 31 August 2026, and the company bought the .com at an undisclosed price in the month a funding round valued it at $13.3 billion.

That is also why the asking price grows. Before you are known, the .com of your word is one name among millions, and its holder has no idea you exist. After the funding announcement, the holder knows who needs the name and what you raised. So ask before anyone has heard of you.

The upgrade record

The trade press keeps a record of the companies that started on another ending or a longer name and bought the .com once they could pay. Their prices show what the second date of your plan will cost.

SumoMe paid $1.5 million for Sumo.com, with $500,000 up front and the rest in equal monthly payments over five years (Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 8 February 2017). The company had chased the name for nearly seven years, and it closed the deal with a firm offer and a deadline. The name had last sold for $150,000 in 2008.

NAS.io's founder said the price paid for Nas.com was $1.25 million, Elliot Silver reported on DomainInvesting on 15 April 2026. On 20 August 2026 Silver reported that Stan, which started on StanWith.me and grew on Stan.store, paid $750,000 for Stan.com once its growth made the price affordable.

Some companies buy the .com and stay where they are. Spok Holdings sold a name for a gain of $701,000 without disclosing which, Allemann reported on 12 August 2025. The report identified the name as arch.com, bought by Arch, which runs on arch.co. Arch forwards the .com to its .co. The .io, .store and .co that NAS, Stan and Arch built on each cost a yearly renewalRenewalThe yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.Read the definition.

The two dates of a naming plan

Write the plan before you register anything. The first date is today. It is the ending you build on, chosen by your audience and by its five-year costCost to holdWhat a name costs over five years: the first year plus four renewals.Read the definition: the first year plus four renewals. On .io, the catalog's median first-year price across the registrars we price is $31.98 and its median renewal is $61.75. On .ai they are $85.60 and $84.15, and on .co they are $15.76 and $35.10.

Until the second date, put the ending in the brand. Healthy.io, which had just raised $60 million, printed .io in its logo and never called itself Healthy (Elliot Silver, DomainInvesting, 12 September 2019). Doing that gives visitors and email less reason to drift to someone else's .com.

If the .com of your word is open, register it today, whatever ending you build on. The yearly renewal of .com is $13.40, and the .com is the name you would otherwise buy back at the prices in the upgrade record. If the .com is taken, read who holds it and set a Watch on it.

The second date is a trigger, not a calendar day. It can be the first funding round, a revenue level, or the month misdirected email starts arriving. Write it down with a budget.

To give the budget a sense of scale, over the three years to 1 November 2026 a one-word .com sold at a median of $3,025 in the sales we track, against $400 for a one-word .io, with some sales far above both.

The country-ending risk, in proportion

Some of the startup endings are country codes: .co belongs to Colombia, and .io belongs to the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Chagos Islands. Both are sold to anyone, but a country code lives on a list that governments can change.

Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 3 October 2024 that the United Kingdom had agreed to hand the islands to Mauritius, which put the future of .io in question. On 4 October 2024 Murphy set out ICANNICANNThe body that sets the rules for domain names and approves new endings.Read the definition's rule: when a code drops off the international list, the ending gets five years, extendable to ten, for an orderly transition before it is retired.

The handover had been frozen for lack of American consent, Murphy reported on 13 April 2026: .io is safe for now, and its future is uncertain. ICANN still keeps .su in use three decades after the Soviet Union ended, as Murphy noted in 2024. This is a risk to know about, not a reason to avoid the ending.

Before you choose the ending

• Say the name to three people, have them write the address, and count the .com answers.
• Name your audience in one word: developers, founders, consumers, or money.
• Read who holds the .com of your word today, and whether it shows a price.
• Write down the five-year cost of the ending you build on: the first year plus four renewals.
• Register the .com now if it is open, whatever ending you build on.
• Put the ending in the logo and in the way you say the name.
• Route your email through a .com you own, or count the misdirected mail.
• Write down the trigger and the budget for the .com, and set a Watch on it.