Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by echelon 1682 days ago
How much does a domain name like "begin.com" cost, and how do you get a good domain / brand name for your startup (without calling it "PurpleKerfuffle" or something unregistered)?

Is there a market for this? A strategy?

I'm trying to get something good, but I keep getting back figures in the millions of dollars. Even ".io" domains are $100k. It's ridiculous. Am I doing something wrong?

2 comments

Some of us People of Age remember when getting a good domain was easy before squatters :)

And yes its hard now. In real life you can have the same business name in two different business areas as long as it doesn't cause confusion. I think we should get rid of domains all the way, I should be able to register any text and make it DNS resolve.

Only answer for having squatters is to make any "domain" buyable so they can't get all the good ones.

> I think we should get rid of domains all the way, I should be able to register any text and make it DNS resolve.

> Only answer for having squatters is to make any "domain" buyable so they can't get all the good ones.

How's that any different from the current domain name system? There will still be only one owner of the text "google" or "begin".

Because then there is also g.oogle, go.ogle, goo.gle, goog.le, googl.e. Or my.google. Or whatever, more options.
Running my own development service, I usually manage to find unique names for people all the time. If they really need a specific name, it's not always expensive to buy it from certain (legit only) places...

We don't use AWS for most of our solutions, we still use traditional (fixed price) hosting. AWS changed hosting into a utility-based service that can balloon way too fast, and they make TONS of money off of unsuspecting clients, especially government clients. It's wild to see their bills at times for even simple web sites that don't get tons of traffic. On-Prem services are better sometimes, but no-one wants to hear that.

Either you are the squatter, you pay the squatter, or you dodge the squatter. It is what it is.
Exactly all the same principles as the real estate market now basically.