Any issue with adding 'hq' to a taken, single word .com?
Let's pretend I selected the word 'apple' and there is a .com domain named Apple.com. The domain is under ownership but is currently unused and simply redirects to a different URL (same owner).
- If I buy AppleHQ.com, am I above board?
- Do I have to refer to my website and all branding as Apple HQ for the life of my site?
Slack (Slack.com) also owns SlackHQ.com, I am not sure if they owned the HQ site first and then bought slack.com once they had money, but their HQ site continues to use their normal non-HQ branding throughout, so any feedback you can provide about this situation would be helpful, since it seems similar to my situation.
Edit: Loving the feedback. It seems like there are way more examples than I originally thought of businesses adding 'hq' on to the end of the domain.
Groove does millions in revenue and is groovehq.com none of their branding carries the HQ either.
For the most part companies can't trademark single words that are commonly used, so you should be in the clear :)
Another startup that recently did this was lattice
They had latticehq.com but after raising they changed to lattice.com
Many businesses started out with another domain than they're using now. My new business has HQ appended too. Simply because the non-hq domain was taken ánd it did not have anything to with my business.
I'd say it's totally fine. I've used words like "get", "go" previous to for domain names.
If you have the financial means later, you can always go about purchasing the non-hq domain, but don't sweat it now.
Basecamp was originally http://basecamphq.com
Ah you're right! And just like the official Slack twitter users the handle SlackHQ, Basecamp does the same (@BasecampHQ).
Thank you!!
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Headquarters
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