Cheap TLDs (.cyou, .icu, .top) — spam reputation poison or fine for projects?

I feel this in my soul. I run a small hosting thing on the side in Mexico City and every peso matters with the exchange rate where it is.

Have you looked at AlpNames gone, obviously, but what about INWX? They sometimes run promos on .icu that hit €3.90. Not under $4 but close. Their API is solid, I use it for a few .mx domains. German company, decent support in English.

Otherwise: tell your client $4 is 2023 pricing. Inflation hit domains too.

Good call, I will check their current promo. And yeah, I have had the "inflation hit domains too" conversation. Client hears "$4" from some blog post in 2021 and thinks it is forever.

I am also looking at .store and .site as alternatives. Slightly more expensive but way better reputation. Hostinger has .site at $0.99 first year, $10.99 renewal. Still not $4 but the client might accept it for the credibility bump.

The real answer is probably: raise prices. But that is a different forum thread.

.store is operated by Radix, same as .site and .online. Radix has better compliance reputation than some of the ultra-budget operators. Their abuse team responds, they have a trusted notifier program. I have never seen .store on a default TLD blocklist, though individual domains certainly get listed.

For landing pages that need to look "real" to a human eye, .site and .store pass that test better than .cyou or .icu. A user sees .store and thinks "oh, a store." They see .icu and think "what is icu, intensive care?" Not a rational reaction but humans are not rational.

Still not under $4 though.

Do you have similar numbers for .dev or .app? Google runs a tight ship on those but I wonder if the pricing floor keeps abuse down enough to matter. I am considering .app for a small SaaS side project and the TLS requirement is actually a plus for me.

Also: anyone using Gandi for .app? Their renewal is steep but I like their no-bullshit WHOIS policy.

I do not have the same 18-month study, but anecdotally .dev and .app are clean. The $12-15/year floor helps, and Google's registry policies are aggressive. They also require HTTPS, which filters out a huge class of lazy abuse.

The tradeoff is Google controls the registry. Most people are fine with that. Some are not.

For your SaaS: .app is a solid choice. Slightly more consumer-facing than .dev in perception. Either beats .cyou for trust.

Late to this but: I had a .top domain for a Discord bot dashboard. Ran fine for a year. Then Discord started flagging .top links as "potentially suspicious" in embeds. Not blocked, just a warning that users had to click through. Killed engagement. Moved to .net, problem vanished overnight.

So add "platform-specific reputation" to the list of concerns. Discord, Telegram, some Reddit automods: they all have coarse TLD filters. Not email, not firewalls, just social platforms being cautious.

For a portfolio this does not matter. For anything with sharing: it matters a lot.