Your own domain from day one or cloud provider's sub domain?
Hello community,
This is my first post and I'm really glad I found this community of like-minded people who got out of the hermit lifestyle making apps could mean sometimes (... or maybe it's just me). :)
So here is the scenario: a great idea just hits you and you decide you're gonna pursue it (maybe after getting it through the Meat Grinder: https://tylertringas.com/business-ideas-meat-grinder/). You even think you could hack around something in 1-2 weeks. I'm curious what would you do:
- Reserve a domain, create a landing page with the idea, post it on some forums (like IH), gather signups, then decide whether to build it or not based on how that went.
- OR -
- Go ahead and build the product draft (it should only take 1-2 weeks), deploy it on Heroku under <my_cool_app>.herokuapp.com (or on some other provider), and share its link in forums asking users to evaluate it before even settling on its name/logo/branding/etc.
The downside of registering a domain too early is that you might decide after getting some feedback that the domain you picked sucks. I've made this mistake myself but at the end of the day domains are pretty cheap so it's not the end of the world.
On the other hand, posting a link to your Heroku sub-domain has some downsides as well. Aside from not looking professional it can lead to "broken" links on other websites if you post the link to a lot of different places. You might be able to deal with this to some degree with URL redirects but in my experience it's a pain that only gets worse with time.
So I guess the short answer is, don't let it stop you from starting to build and get some early feedback but once you've settled on the name fork over the few bucks and buy the domain.
True, don't let it distract you from working on your project. I prefer just buying a domain, don't choose a 50+ bucks TLD and you're fine. You can always buy another domain on top.
If you're searching for a cheap TLD, look at https://tld-list.com (seems down right now but otherwise great resource)
domain names are cheap if you wait somebody else may register it
Your own domain name.
Don't fuck around.
If you commit to your own domain name, you'll be more likely to launch.
Craig
I would say use your own domain. They are cheap.