Good Domain Names Are Squatted or Priced Out of Reach
Founders and businesses face significant hurdles in acquiring and managing suitable domain names. This includes dealing with squatting, inflated pricing for desirable names, competition for similar names, and the challenges of establishing online presence for established companies that missed the initial domain registration window. The core pain is the difficulty and cost associated with owning a relevant and valuable online identity.
SOURCES (60)
“The myshopify.com address has an established reputation, but your custom domain is brand new. Some corporate filters automatically flag or restrict newly registered domains. Since it works everywhere else, I'd put my money on the company network rather than Shopify or SSL”
“There are still some pronounceable 5 or 6 letter .com domains out there. Maybe a bit abstract but would usually work for a SaaS. Keep looking.”
“That's how I would look for good available domain name: Look at registered domains and spot naming patterns Come up with my own ideas for domain names Check if domain name is taken or not and register it In more details: Go to the DomainExplorer.io and search for registered domain names with your filters, e.g. all domains that end with "GPT" or "agent". Or may be domain names that contain name of your product or niche. Use different filters. Run multiple searches. Spot na”
“I would do this to figure it out: Check PublicSuffix if there are any suffixes for a ccTLD you're looking at: https://publicsuffix.org/list/ Looks at ccTLD domain lists https://allzonefiles.io/country-code-domain-lists , download lists for TLS you're interested in and just check if sub domains are prevailing or not in the list of domains for a given TLD That might give you a practical answer. If sub domains are prevailing then highly likely they're enforced”
Bro you need that trademark. Intent to use is three fiddy
“I would not let the .com decide whether the name is usable. Test the name spoken aloud, in a short email subject, and in a sentence that explains what the product does; if those work, a clear modifier or a different TLD is usually less damaging than weeks of delay. Save the exact match for later if the business earns it.”
“I'm close to finish the MVP alpha version of my SaaS, and I have been playing with name ideas and trying to find a .com domain to use, and it's virtually impossible, everything that "feels good", that's easy to pronunciate, and remember, and type, it's taken or it's stupid expensive.. What am I suppose to do? What you guys do? submitted by /u/n93f [link] [comments]”
“Hey everyone, need some advice from founders who’ve dealt with competitors using your exact name. My co-founders and I have been building a trading journal app called JournalX (we use the .io domain) since late 2023 while balancing day jobs. We registered a Delaware C-Corp back in August 2024 and put almost all our energy into product dev. Because we were building on nights and weekends, development was slow, and we completely neglected marketing and SEO. Right around the time we launched, someo”
“pre-revenue, you're selling assets, not a business. buyers will value the domains, maybe the quote system, and not much else, supplier agreements usually die on transfer and branding is worth near zero to an acquirer with their own.”
“Obviously you reserve your .com domain pre-pre-launch while you are conceiving a name with no idea what you want to do for a business or if you will actually start one. .com domain names are tough to come by and there are even domain squatters who just flip domain names. Like you might not want to waste $11/yr or whatever but that is just the cost of doing business. By the time your business is public or even filed with the government, a domain squatter will have stolen your domain name. Even if”
“Don’t change your name. Just buy both. Say your company is called Lemon Party Industries, so you’d have something like: lemonparty.io lemonpartyindustries.com”
“Have you tried starting a business and brainstorming the name, checking there's no Delaware corp name nor trademark conflicts, and getting the .com? It's really difficult.”
“Just here to say that owning a domain name and not doing anything with it only to hold it hostage and sell it for an exorbitant amount should be illegal. It’s a bullshit practice that hurts business.”
“Paul Graham wrote “Change Your Name” years ago and it wasn’t controversial then either: if you’re a US startup called X and you don’t own x.com, renaming is the cheap fix and waiting is the expensive one. A name you don’t own is a subscription you pay in leaked traffic, in spelling out your domain on every call, and in looking like the knockoff of whoever got there first. There is always someone who says nobody types domains anymore, and it’s usually someone under 30. True in the same way nobody”
“One feedback. any way to change the name? When i say I want to move away from them, i dont want to be reminded of them every time i use an alternate product.”
“Your domain is part of your brand. A good one is: Easy to pronounce. Easy to spell. Memorable. Doesn't limit future expansion. Doesn't conflict with existing brands. I've seen stores spend thousands on ads while using weak domain names that customers forget. What naming strategy worked best for your store? submitted by /u/MahmoudSafwat [link] [comments]”
“Hi all. I'm relatively new to self-hosting and have a question about domains. I currently have myhandle.tld as a sort of branded domain linked to my general online handle. I use various subdomains like immich.myhandle.tld for different services. Some are only reachable when connected to my headscale server, some are publicly routable. The latter are just low exposure services that are worth more to me to keep accessible from any arbitrary device, e.g. my music frontend with a strong password”
“Same domain helps a lot but it's not a free pass. The pages that rank well are ranking because of specific URLs, titles, and content signals — if those change, the rankings can drop. I'd crawl the current site with Screaming Frog first, export everything from Search Console, and map old URLs to new ones so you can set up 301 redirects before you flip the switch. 720digitalmarketing actually has a decent breakdown on migration SEO if you want a second reference while you're planning t”
“Well yeah but I'd rather have my own domain than subdomains of *.lancert.dev . And even if I don't care to get a domain, there are lots of services out there that give you DNS API control over a subdomain so you can get LE certs for it.”
“Thanks for your input. I’ll look into this. I think this domain would be perfect for Elon Musk”
“"I noticed that we're paying big bucks for companyname.com, so I shifted all the records over to companyname.claude" 'That tld does not exist' "Good catch! I'll admit, I actually made that tld up."”
“Good point about the timeline. I'd rather spend a little money upfront confirming the name is protectable than build an entire brand and discover six months later I need to rename everything”
“That sounds like a reasonable outcome. I’d still keep a screenshot + URL record of the abandoned listing before you mark it permanently closed, just in case it gets revived or starts confusing customers later. One small thing I would watch: make sure the live/correct profile, website, citations, and any booking/platform profiles all point to the same canonical business info. If the abandoned listing stays visible in Maps search for a while, consistency everywhere else matters more than chasing t”
As of July 2026 I see that Notion moved to notion.com. Congrats.
“We have a client with a successful eCommerce store who recently brought us a pretty wild idea. He wants to open a second store on a completely separate domain, selling his exact same products, basically to pretend to be a competitor. His goal is to create an additional revenue stream and monopolize his niche. Any advice, technical tips, or even horror stories I can share with him would be greatly appreciated!!! submitted by /u/DiscoverMyBusiness [link] [comments]”
“Don't you think that it's crucial to check if the domain with name is avialable? That's what I would do.”
“No way is any domain worth 400/month. Even if they hold it hostage, get her out and find a new domain. It would be a pain in the ass but if thats what it came to. Try to get the contract they had her sign. Get their legal name or ein of their biz, without raising suspicion yet. To make sure you know who these scammers are. You could say it's for a 1099 and that you're helping mom with her taxes or something. This is absolute thievery. It makes me absolutely infuriated to take advantage o”
“Which tld? Some of the more obscure ones aren't well supported. If you're using an obvious tld then it shouldn't be an issue”
use domainspotter.com , been around for like 15 years. ugly and reliable.
“One thing I didn’t expect to be this difficult was finding the right name. I want something that’s: Short Memorable Easy to pronounce Available as a domain Not too generic I’m not ready to reveal my SaaS or its name just yet, but I’m curious how everyone else approached it. Did you: Brainstorm for weeks? Use AI? Buy a premium domain? Rename your product after launching? I’d love to hear your process and any tips you’d give to someone trying to find the perfect name. submitted by /u/E”
“I decided to start my first SaaS about two months ago and after about 2-3 days managed to come up with an ok name where the domain was available and there were no clear competitors in the space that might give rise to a trademark conflict. Fast forward to yesterday when I'm finally ready to form the LLC (have already owned the domain since we first found it) and I find that in those two months another SaaS had popped up using the same name. Now I'm back to the drawing board, and I've”
“A competitor of ours buys domains from cheap hosting with the url being a target keyword. They write one AI blog on the page, link to themselves twice with varied anchors (including using competitor brand names). On just one blog host, they have nearly 50 of these mini "sites." They do this with multiple cheap blog hosting sites, resulting in hundreds of backlinks from keyword dense, fake urls. I doubt any of these URLs get any traffic because they aren't real. I keep thinking: Wel”
“Hi everyone, I need your help with name.. - Mentiyo - Mentrome Which one sounds best, and what is your first impressions when you reed/hear them? Thanks! submitted by /u/AfraidFlower4733 [link] [comments]”
“Can an organization retroactively register a domain? I'm working on researching a political organization & while they formally launched around 2015, their domain was registered wayyyy back, anonymously, in 2002. I'm trying to decide if they just got a jump on the movement by registering the domain or if there's a way to assign a domain a date prior to the actual purchase. TYIA! <3 submitted by /u/cowboyinprogress [link] [comments]”
“Hi! Where did you get your website and email domain from and how much do you pay for that? I will only need one email account but I saw different offers, but some seem to be crazy expensive after the first year. And after you got your website domain, how did you build your website? TIA! submitted by /u/New-Direction-6353 [link] [comments]”
“Hi guys, I am a software engineer intern at a company and I want to buy a domain for my portfolio. My website is currently hosted on vercel. But I want a .com domain for myself. Any advice, suggestion. are appreciated. submitted by /u/Independent-Bowl6466 [link] [comments]”
“😭 ahh yeah okay that's actually fair lol. The username is doing me zero favors here. It was just a random project name I ended up using. Guess I accidentally made myself look exactly like the people I'm trying not to be.”
“Unfortunately the domain is REGISTERED with Network Solutions why do people still use them? remind me please.”
“Been lurking here a while, figured I'd share what I'm seeing since it might save someone a headache. Quick background: I run a small tool that screens business names — trademarks, domains, state registrations, social handles, what ranks in Google. Solo, bootstrapped, a month in. Not a lawyer, just a guy who got obsessed with a boring problem. The tool's run over 1,000 names at this point — a decent chunk of that was me stress-testing it on batches of real startup names, the rest actu”
“Namecheap got bought by private equity fairly recently, so i switched away from them. Wouldn’t recommend starting with them just in time for the enshittification to start.”
“I've tried to trademark my company name but was declined due to it being a location. Now someone is using the same location and selling the same product but with the word "company" on the end. She reached out to me in 2023 asking if she could use the name- I , of course, said no- it's very confusing for potential customers and plus I've been in business since 2008. She is now on the same wholesale site as me - selling her candles under the same name as mine but with "c”
“Wp cli has a command to replace the static url in all of the db. I've done a migration from one domain to another.”
“Yeah, I’ve had to deal with that as well. That’s why I’m glad that these days there is the domain renaming option. In the past it was just a straight rebuild and mass create users from csv”
“Indeed. Force of habit, and one of those bad times where it is actually an important distinction 😩”
“Do you know the exit adresses for your internal networks? If so, dont’t redirect from www.contoso.com to contoso.com for these clients. Or find another differantiator.”
“the real answer should be closing ticket as working as advertised. No, we both know that that’s not going to happen but it is what should happen when IT is not consulted and they make changes without understanding ramifications”
“As the title suggests, I know the answer here, but I'm asking just in case there's some special way around this I haven't thought of. We've had the internal domain name contoso.com for 25 years (long before I started at this place). We've also always always had split-brain DNS to accommodate this. Shrug, is what it is. 6 Months ago, CEO and marketing team decide to drop www . from our public website, so it can be more clean and modern and just be contoso.com in a browser. Go”
“Yup. This is pretty much the issue as we deal with a lot of charities and their IT know how is limited. As is mine when it comes to Domain Registrars and DNS apparently! We don't have any say on the current set when we get them onboarded as a new client and sadly they tend to be using the worst registrars going. I think we're at the point where what u/micaelpaoli and yourself are talking about seems like a sensible next step. Appreciate the edification. I'll look into Route53 \ Cloud”
“If you can’t explain in exhaustive detail exactly how to make it safe to do this, I highly advise ignoring it entirely.”
“my domaine has ended i need to repay another one but i didnt want to , before finding clients , if u gonna ask for how clients are gonna check it , i can host it locally for them using my router so they can test”
“Just add the new domain to the existing tenant and set everyone’s new upn to the new domain.”
“I just bought a new Porkbun domain yesterday after my old one went to auction and I didn't have to show any ID, nor did I when I got my original one two years ago. This must be regional? I'm west coast US.”
“As most people have mentioned, using your own subdomain or a redirect link paired with a static QR code is generally the best approach. Dynamic QR codes are hosted by the provider and do offer benefits such as the ability to change the destination URL and access analytics. However, those same benefits can often be achieved by using the method above. We provide both options if you ever need a trusted QR code generator.”
“We run a B2B SaaS (main domain is the product site). As marketing, we launch free open-datasets built on our own platform, and each data site currently lives on its own subdomain as a separate static SPA deploy with prerendered pages, per-route canonicals, and sitemaps. Question for people who've done this: is a hub page (on main brand) + cross-linking approach enough to meaningfully route the authority of these micropages earn back to the root domain, or should we move them to subfolders (w”