We get asked this in almost every first meeting: "Should we go with .in or .com?" The honest answer is that it depends on who your customers are, but there are some practical rules that make the decision easier.
Who are you selling to?
If nearly all your customers are in India, a .in domain is a perfectly good choice. It signals that you're a local business, and Google uses country-code domains as one signal for local relevance. A bakery in Pune or a CA firm in Jaipur doesn't need a .com to look credible.
If you sell abroad, or plan to, .com is still the safest default. International buyers recognise it instantly, and it doesn't tie you to one country.
Many of our clients register both and redirect one to the other. Domains are cheap, so this is usually worth doing.
Short beats clever
A good domain is easy to say over the phone. Try this test: call a friend, tell them your domain once, and ask them to type it. If they get it wrong, so will customers.
Things that cause trouble:
- Hyphens (people forget them)
- Numbers that could be written as words ("4" or "four"?)
- Deliberate misspellings like "kwik" or "xpress"
- Very long names that end up abbreviated anyway
Should the domain include keywords?
A few years ago, people bought domains like best-plumber-in-delhi.com hoping it would help rankings. It doesn't do much any more, and it looks spammy. Use your brand name. If your brand name is taken, add a simple word like your city or your trade, for example sharmadental.in rather than sharma.in.
Who owns the domain?
This is the part that bites people years later. We've seen many businesses whose domain was registered by a former employee, a freelancer, or a previous agency, in that person's own account. When the relationship ends, getting the domain back can take months.
Always make sure:
- The domain is registered in an account you control, with your company email.
- Auto-renew is turned on, with a card that won't expire next month.
- You have the login details written down somewhere safe, not just with your developer.
Agencies (us included) are happy to manage renewals for you, but the ownership should always sit with the business.
What about .co.in, .shop, .tech and the rest?
.co.in is fine but less memorable, and people often type .com or .in by mistake. The newer extensions like .shop, .studio or .tech can work for specific brands, especially startups, but they're still less familiar to the average Indian customer. For a traditional business, we'd stick with .in or .com.
Our quick recommendation
- Local business, local customers: register the
.in, also grab the.comif available. - Export or online service: lead with
.com, hold the.inas a redirect. - Startup with an unusual name: whichever you can get that's short, then protect the obvious typos.
It takes ten minutes to register a domain and potentially years to undo a bad one. Worth getting right on day one.
