What to do when your startup's .com is taken
You have a name and the .com belongs to someone else. The four real options — buy it, modify it, change extension or change the name — and how to choose between them.
It usually happens late. The name has survived the founders' arguments, a few friends have heard it, someone has drawn a rough logo — and then the .com loads a parking page, or someone else's company. At that point there are four options: buy the exact .com, add something to the name, launch on a different extension, or choose a different name. Each is reasonable in some situations. What differs is when each one costs you.
First, find out what "taken" actually means
A registered domain is not necessarily an unavailable one. Open it in a browser and look at what is there. There are three broad cases, and they lead to very different decisions.
- An active business is using it. If that business works in your field, the domain is the smaller problem: you may be choosing a name another company already trades under. Stop and get proper advice on the name itself before you spend anything on the domain.
- It shows a for-sale page, a price or a make-offer form. The owner wants to sell, and the question is only price and process.
- It is parked or blank, with no sign of sale. Someone holds it — an investor, an old project, a forgotten registration. It may be for sale, but you will have to find and reach the owner, and they set the terms.
Registration records (WHOIS or RDAP lookups) show when a domain was registered and at which registrar, though the owner's contact details are usually hidden. They tell you how long someone has held the name — not whether they would sell it, or for how much.
Option 1: buy the exact .com
Buying makes the most sense when the name has already done work for you — you have tested it with customers, you are about to spend money putting it in front of people, and your business spreads by people saying the name to each other. In our judgment the exact .com matters most when people hear a name before they see it, such as a consumer brand mentioned on a podcast or recommended in conversation, because the listener has to guess the address. It matters less for a tool people mostly reach through a link.
If you go this way, treat it as a purchase rather than a negotiation game. Ask for the price, decide privately what the name is worth to you, and if the price is higher, make a serious offer. You do not need to explain your company, your funding, your timing or how much the name matters to your plans; the offer can stand on its own. Pay through escrow or a marketplace that handles the transfer, never by bank transfer to someone you have only emailed, and get the domain moved into an account you control before the money is released to the seller.
Two practical details catch people out. A transfer between registrars needs an authorisation code from the current registrar, and some registrars block moving a domain to another registrar for a period after it changes hands — so plan launch dates around the transfer, not the handshake. And budget for renewal: owning a .com is an annual fee forever, which is small but not optional.
Option 2: change the name slightly
The common fix is a modifier: get, try, use, join, app, hq. A modifier is easiest to live with when people mostly reach you through links, where the address is typed once and then saved. It is hardest when the name is mainly spoken, because the listener has to remember the extra word as well as the name. Ask yourself whether you would still be happy with the modifier in five years, when the company is known by the short version and the address still is not.
Avoid the fixes that fail when the name is said aloud: hyphens, doubled letters, swapped vowels and numbers standing in for words. Say the address to someone over the phone once. If they cannot type it, the modification has only moved the problem.
Option 3: launch on another extension
.io, .ai and .co are common in parts of the technology world and can be a reasonable way to launch while the exact .com is out of reach. The tradeoff is worth stating plainly. Some people will type .com out of habit and reach whoever owns it; email addressed to the wrong domain goes there too; and attention your marketing creates for the name can also benefit the .com you do not control. If you start this way, treat it as a temporary step: know who owns the .com and roughly what it would cost, so moving to it later is a plan rather than a scramble.
Option 4: choose a name you can own outright
Sometimes the honest answer is that the name was only nearly right. A different name whose .com you can buy today avoids the modifier, the misdirected email and a planned move to another domain later. That is the trade Webba is built around: every name here is a curated .com, available to buy through Webba. If you are building software, the software and developer tools collection is a reasonable place to start; if length matters most, see the short .com names.
A quick way to decide
- Is an active business already using the name in your field? Then the name needs rethinking before the domain does.
- Will most customers hear your name before they see it? If yes, the exact .com — or a new name — matters more than it seems in a spreadsheet.
- Can you buy the .com without taking money from the product? If not, a modifier or another extension is a sensible start, with the upgrade planned.
- Would a name you can own today be just as good? Give that option a fair hearing before you commit to the others.
Whichever way you go, decide before you print, register the company or brief a designer. The more places a name appears — documents, accounts, packaging, people's memories — the more work it is to change.