Choosing a domain name looks like a ten-minute errand squeezed between more important things. Then it turns out that name ends up on the sign, on the van, on the invoices and in the email address, and that you have to dictate it over the phone three times a day. Changing it later is possible, but it costs.
What you are actually choosing
You are not choosing an internet address. You are choosing what your business is called when you are not there: the website, yes, but also the email, which comes from the same place, and the name people type right or wrong when somebody has recommended you.
That is why the good test is not a visual one. It is this: take it, read it out over the phone to someone who has never heard it and see whether they have to ask anything. If they ask «with an h?», «all one word?» or «hyphen or underscore?», you already know what will happen every week.
The six rules we use
- It has to be dictated without spelling. If saying it out loud needs an explanation, it is a bad name however good it looks written down.
- Shorter wins. Every extra word is another chance to get it wrong. Two words is usually the sensible ceiling.
- No hyphens or numbers. The hyphen disappears when you say it out loud and a number has two versions, the digit and the word. People will write the other one.
- No keywords shoehorned in. A domain along the lines of cheap-plumber-girona does not rank better and does look like a leaflet through the door.
- It must not clash with a registered trademark. It is the check almost nobody makes and the only one that can end in a letter from a lawyer.
- It has to last five years. Put the town or the product in the name and you are closing doors on the version of you five years from now.
And a rule that is not a rule: if you are torn between a funny one and a clear one, the clear one wins. Funny wears off; spelling out a joke on the phone wears off faster.
Want to know what it would cost you?
We reply the same day. No commitment, no sales pitch.
Four examples, to make it concrete
All made up, but the kind that reach us every month.
- fusteriapalau.com — the family surname. Short, dictated first time, and it still works in ten years whether they make furniture or kitchens.
- tallersgermansribasifills.com — the whole legal name crammed in. Nobody types it correctly first go and it does not fit on a card.
- installations-integral-jm.es — two hyphens and a set of initials. Read out over the phone it falls apart at the first hyphen.
- cheaprefurbsgirona.com — the keyword shoehorned in. It does not rank better, it promises something you may not want to promise, and it ties you to one town and one price.
If your name looks like the last three and you are still in time, change it now, while it is free. If you have had it for years, keep reading: there is a section for that.
.com, .es or .cat: which one is yours
.com
It is still the one people type by default. If you sell abroad or want to grow without thinking about borders, it is the first one to ask for. It is also the hardest to find free.
.es
Ideal for a business working in Spain that wants that to show. There is far more room free than in .com and nobody reads it as a second choice.
.cat
It makes sense if your business lives in Catalan and you want to say so from the address itself. It is run by the foundation behind the .cat domain and it has its own conditions of use, worth reading before deciding.
The usual question: should you buy several? One gets used and the rest point at it. If your name lends itself to confusion, take the version people will mistype as well and redirect it. Buying fifteen just in case is throwing money away.
The three checks before you pay
Ten minutes that save years.
- Trademarks. Search the name at the Spanish patent and trademark office. A free domain does not mean a free name: they are two different registers. We are not lawyers, but this takes a while to check and avoids the big headache.
- Company name. If you are setting up a company, the name is requested at the central companies register, and it can be taken there too.
- Social handles and history. Check whether the name is free on the networks you will use, and search the domain itself: if it used to be something else, better to know now.
What you must never do
Register it in the name of whoever builds your website. It happens far more than you would think and it surfaces late, usually the day you want to change supplier. The domain goes in your name or your company name, with your email as the contact, full stop. How to check who owns yours and what to do if it is wrong is in who owns your domain?.
Mine is already a bad one: should I change it?
It depends on two things: what the current one is costing you and how much you have built on top of it. If the domain is unpronounceable but you have been ranking for six years and all your revenue comes through it, the change gets planned calmly. If you have just started, do it now.
When you do change, the old one is not abandoned: it is kept and redirected page by page with permanent redirects, so neither Google nor your customers get lost on the way. The full procedure, with the before list and the day-of list, is in migrate your website without losing rankings.
We'll tell you in a ten-minute conversation
We reply the same day. No commitment, no sales pitch.
Email matters more than it looks
Your email address comes out of the domain, and there a long name gets paid for every day: nobody wants to dictate «orders at» followed by four words. That is another reason to keep it short. What changes when you write from your own domain, and what it costs, is in business email with your own domain.
What it costs and what it includes with us
We do not charge for it separately. The domain, the hosting, the email and the maintenance are inside the plans published on our pricing page: from 100 € a month for the one-page landing and 200 € for the site with up to ten pages, plus VAT and with no lock-in. And it is always registered in the client name, with their email as the contact.
If you are at the naming stage, that conversation is free and usually takes half an hour: you give us three candidates and we tell you which one dictates best, which is free and which will give you trouble.
The ten-minute check
Before paying for anything, do this with your three candidates. Read each one out to two people over the phone and note what they ask. Type it into a search engine and see what comes up. Look it up in the trademark register. And say it out loud the way you would answer the phone: «good morning, yourname». If any of the four grates, cross it off and try the next one.
We work from Palamós, with businesses in Girona and Barcelona
We register and manage the domains for the websites we build, and plenty we did not build. If you are starting out and have two or three names in mind, send them over and we will give you our opinion with no commitment; and if you already have one you are not happy with, we will tell you whether it is worth changing or not.
Tell us what you need and we'll give you a price
We reply the same day. No commitment, no sales pitch.