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16 Comments

Why is nobody using the .net domain extension?

I have been observing the product page for a while now and have not seen any .net domain extension. Most of the domain extensions here are .com, .co, .io and .app.

Has .net domain extension gone into extinction?

on February 3, 2020
  1. 15

    For me at least, .net feels antiquated and low-quality. I'm not sure why.

    If I had to guess, I'd say it's because decades ago the only two TLDs anyone considered were .com or .net. You only ever used .net if you couldn't get the .com, so it felt like a second-rate choice. Nowadays there are plenty of other TLDs, and some of them are even cool, e.g. .io or anything where your TLD spells the last few letters of your full name…

    But .net still retains that same second-rate feeling to me.

    1. 1

      Thanks for your response.

      If .com were very expensive, would you have settled with .io? Assuming .co isn't available either. I am curious because your platform is for technical and non-technical people

      1. 2

        Certainly. For me the name "Indie Hackers" was more essential to the brand than the .com TLD, so I would've considered others if I couldn't have gotten the .com. That said, I still paid $2000 for the .com.

    1. 1

      Nice. Would you choose .net over .io?

      1. 2

        I choose .net if the .com is taken.

        Yes, I prefer .net to .io

  2. 2

    I never thought I'll use .net for my projects, even if it's the second TLD that comes after .com

  3. 2

    It feels like using a yahoo.com or hotmail.com email address in 2020. It's not the first impression I'm looking to make.

  4. 2

    I used .net for my first project. I think the best TLD depends on what the projects target audience is. Something marketed more towards techies is fine with .io, but regular people seem to be surprised when something is not a .com, .org, etc...

    1. 1

      Would you go for quora.net or quora.io? Assuming you own Quora and .com & .co are not available

  5. 2

    .co or .io is way cooler than .net which has the association of being a low budget crap website.

    1. 1

      Would you go for quora.net or quora.io? Assuming you own Quora and .com & .co are not available

    2. 1

      Make sense. How about a website like indiehackers that caters for technical and non technical groups?

      If you are to go with either .net or .io, which would you choose for indiehackers? Asumming .com and .co are not available

  6. 1

    I had no idea of this "low-budget" perception. I wonder if this is a geographical phenomenon?

    1. 1

      Possibly more age-related than geographical. Com domains were expensive and dot net domains were cheap, so there were statistically more low quality spammy domains on dot net than dot com. I would have been wary of making a credit card purchase from a .net domain before PayPal became prevalent.

  7. 1

    This comment was deleted 6 years ago.

  8. 2

    This comment was deleted 6 years ago.

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