Finding a good domain now feels harder than designing the product.
You think of a name and check the .com. It's taken. You add a word. Still taken. You tweak the spelling. Same result. Almost every clean, obvious name is already registered, and many of them are held like real estate.
Earlier this year, ai.com was reportedly acquired by Crypto.com for around 70 million US dollars. Whether the exact figure is right matters less than what it tells you. Two letters and a dot can be worth tens of millions, because short, clear names are scarce.
Most products will never need a two-letter domain. Every product does need a name people can read, say, type and trust. This article covers why the domain matters more for software than most people think, how to work with scarcity instead of against it, and a checklist to run before you commit.
In short
For a software product, the domain isn't only a web address. It's in your login URL, your emails, your invoices and every link your customers share.
When the .com you want is taken, try a small change in spelling before you settle for a weaker extension.
A name you have to spell out every time will cost you in every conversation.
Check the renewal price, not the first-year price, and never let the domain expire.
Why the domain matters more for software
For a marketing site, a domain is where people find you. For a software product, it's built into the product itself.
It's the address people log in to. Customers bookmark it, type it and paste it into their team chat every day.
Your emails come from it. Invoices, password resets and reminders are sent from your domain. Changing it later means verifying a new domain with your email provider and rebuilding its sending reputation, and in the meantime your emails are more likely to land in spam.
Links to it spread everywhere. Help articles, integrations, customer documents and old posts all point at it. You can redirect those links to a new domain only as long as you still own the old one.
Buyers read it as a signal. For international B2B buyers, a .com is still the default. Many will type .com out of habit.
That makes the domain one of the hardest things to change once the product is live. It's worth getting right at the start, when changing it costs nothing.
Work with scarcity, not against it
Browse Dribbble or Awwwards and you'll notice a pattern. Many of the strongest product names didn't fight domain scarcity. They worked around it with a small change in spelling that keeps the meaning intact:
adding one extra letter
shifting a vowel
using a subtle suffix
Your brain still reads the word instantly and catches the intention, but the spelling is different enough for the domain to be available. It's often more memorable, too.
We did this with Memverr, our own membership platform. The link to "member" is obvious the moment you read it, and the spelling made a clean domain possible.
Readable beats clever
The common mistake is pushing the spelling too far. A name can look interesting on a logo and still be exhausting to say or explain. If you have to spell it out every time you mention it, on a call, in an intro or to a new hire, you've already lost part of the battle.
The best modified names don't feel modified. Nobody stops to question them. They just read as a word.
Our rule for this is simple: if the domain workaround distracts from the meaning, it isn't worth it. Keep iterating instead of settling for something that feels forced. A name doesn't only live in the address bar. It lives in conversations, pitches, invoices and people's memories, and it should feel calm when you say it out loud.
Your name is the first user experience
Before anyone sees your interface, your logo or your content, they meet your name. If the name is confusing or hard to remember, that friction carries into everything that follows.
A good name reduces effort. A great one disappears and leaves only the meaning behind.
A naming checklist for software products
Run a name through these before you commit.
The phone test. Say the name once to someone. Can they type it correctly without asking how it's spelled?
The meaning test. Does the spelling change keep the meaning clear, or does it make people stop and decode it?
Check the .com first. If it's taken, try a small spelling change before you move to another extension.
If you use another extension, pick one that signals software. .app, .dev and .io are widely used for software products, and .app and .dev only work over HTTPS. Be careful with cheap promotional extensions like .online, .site or .website. They're often linked with spam, which can hurt trust and email delivery.
Look at the renewal price. Many extensions cost a dollar or two in the first year and several times that at renewal. You'll pay the renewal price for as long as the product exists.
Check trademarks and handles. Search for existing trademarks in your market, and check the name on the platforms you'll use, such as LinkedIn, X, GitHub and Dribbble.
Protect it from day one. Turn on auto-renew and keep the registrar account under the company's control, not a former freelancer's or an old employee's. Short, clean domains that expire are often picked up within days by people who resell them, and you can't redirect a domain you no longer own.
Constraints make better names
Scarcity has made naming better. When everything was available, naming could be lazy. Now it takes intention. It pushes founders and designers to think about language, structure and how a word lands with a stranger.
A domain check isn't the last step anymore. It's part of the process.
The ai.com sale shows how far the value of a short name can go. The lesson for everyone else is simpler: be clear. You don't need two letters. You need a name people can read, say, type and remember.
Layerice is a software design and development studio for businesses. We design and build B2B SaaS and internal business systems. Naming and domains come up at the start of almost every product we work on.