Hey everyone! Maker of One Word Domains here. I recently launched this on Product Hunt and got some pretty good feedback there and was looking forward to launching it on Hacker News as well but oh well, someone did it for me
To give you guys some backstory, I was dabbling around with Flask the other day and decided to build something that I would’ve loved to use when I was trying to find a good name for my startup - a database of all the available one-word domain names out there. It’s a pretty straightforward idea but somehow I’ve never been able to find a resource like this online so I decided to make one myself.
Also, since this is my first time building a web-app from scratch, I'd appreciate any constructive criticism you guys have for me - don't be afraid to tear me apart with your feedback. As of right now, here are a few features that I am planning to add to the website:
- A synonym feature, where you can click on each domain and it'll show you synonyms to that domain that are available (I was actually planning to post about OWD on Hacker News today but I was met with a few obstacles when trying to build this feature, so I had to postpone the launch)
- A "staff picks" section for each TLD page
- .dev TLD page - gotta give back to the dev community!
Let me know what you guys think about these features. Also, please let me know any suggestions that you might have that could make this better. Thanks a lot!
P.S.: Also, I'm thinking about removing domains that were purchased from the "most popular" and "recently viewed" sections - should I do that or should I leave them there? I'm just worried that by leaving them there it's a little misleading - people might think it's still available.
This tool is pretty cool, would be helpful to see prices I guess too. A table format would be easier to navigate. I recently found a TLD that seems underused and has one "total" word potential (chars incl tld as a single word) > .ge
Also can I recommend putting links to other domain providers like porkbun, their platform is super usable and prices are decent.
You might take a look at wee.domains [0] - it's a big table of short available domains from the most popular TLDs. It has pricing from a variety of registrars too.
this is cool, more filtering would be useful (on tld length, whether it's a word). Interesting that ca.rs is still available and pretty cheap. Funnily, sa.rs is also available. pe.pe too, and oh.ms.
Thanks for the suggestions! I've been thinking about adding prices and maybe even a way for you to filter for a specific price range but I'm worried about the pricing discrepancies between different domain name providers so I decided to stick with the Premium and Regular domains distinction instead.
Also, I love the "total" word potential - I'll figure out a way on how to incorporate that!
As for Porkbun, I've received a couple of suggestions to add that, and I'll definitely consider adding it to the mix!
The idea was to build an elopement app that sold elopement packages to various destinations, working with existing service providers in those locales (most wedding photographers provide elopement packages).
I really like that idea! And yes, I'm actually considering adding a "Featured Listings" section where you can list your domains - feel free to sign up on the newsletter and I'll let you know when it's ready! :D
I'd love to see https://porkbun.com added as a domain option. Consistently the cheapest registrar for me, at least for the first year (example, most .coms for me are around: 4.15 / year, renews at $8.56)
Hey this is really cool. I’ve recently started learning python as a hobby, with the goal to eventually start full stack development. I was just wondering, since this is your first web app, how long have you been coding for/how long did it take to get up and running?
Thanks a lot for the kind words! I think you should definitely learn Python - it's a very versatile language, but for the full-stack I would recommend mastering JavaScript instead.
As for me - I've been coding in Python at school for a while now (I'm a data science major) but I haven't really had any experience with the full-stack so I wanted to take this as a learning opportunity for me. In total, it took me a week to build the whole site - the relatively quick timeline is probably because I treated it as a personal hackathon with a one-week deadline.
I’m currently choosing between doing my MBA and going full on into business management, or totally pivoting away and starting cs. So I’ll check this out
Even if you're doing business, it's always good to have a hard skill under your belt, so I'd say there's definitely no harm in mastering CS on the side! Good luck! :D
The ability to simply filter by length would be awesome. Sometimes you just want to find something on the shortest side possible, that isn't a jumble of letters.
Makes sense! I'll have to figure out a way to incorporate that because my current code structure is kind weird, but when I do I'll let you know! Feel free to sign up for the newsletter so I can notify you when that feature is ready! :D
They actually weren't that much work - I recently found this amazing website called Lottiefiles and have been using some of the art I found there as placeholder until I had the time to custom make some of my own, and since this project was intended as an MVP, I didn't really manage to get around to doing that, but I definitely want to in the near future!
And thank you for your encouraging words! I never had any experience building webapps from scratch - I've always resorted to no-code solutions like Webflow because I'm more into design myself. Here's one of my other projects that I'm working on, which I built with Webflow, if you're interested: https://www.sedge.io/
They claim there's still an English word (an adjective) that's available as a .com domain but apparently it's not possible to see what it is from their site.
I remember back in ’99 seeing a list of English words that were still available as .com It was short enough to read at a sitting and I was going through it looking for potential band names. The only one I remember was “osteoclasts.” Unfortunately, we didn’t have a hard enough sound to merit that name.
As of right now napalming.com is available, autocratically.com, cauterizes.com, peronist.com, pickaninnies.com, and doubtless many more.
Most one-word .COMs are weird/obscure, related to negative things or end in S, so not much use for a business. Fornicates.com was available recently though, as was goriest.com, both of which are not bad for less mainstream sites.
Outside .COM there are tons of one word domains. imagines.org was one of the ones I liked when I used to check under that extension.
Any Michaels here might be interested in micks.org. chiptune.org isn't bad. takeouts.org is available. And, uh, poontang.org. I think I'll end this now.
Since there seem to be a few domain related submissions at HN recently, for anyone wanting to register a name, Namecheap has a $6.06 .COM promo currently.
Be careful with namecheap. I used to use them for everything (and still have several domains registered with them), but one of my domains was a short word on an obscure TLD. This year they increased the price by 15x, and support tried to pass the blame by claiming "the registry decided it's a premium domain."
The registry may decide whether a domain is "premium" or not, but I had no issues transferring it to Google Domains and paying less than what I was paying before.
Can you clarify if this was a gTLD or a ccTLD? Being so used to standardized pricing with .com's, this never even occurred to me as a risk.
For anyone unfamiliar with premium TLD pricing:
- it's common for .com's to be sold on the aftermarket for high prices but the renewal prices are standardized. So if I invest $36k on buying appletini.com, I know I will be able to renew it for ~$10/yr.
- gTLD's like .land or .tech seem to set premium prices at the registrar level and apply to renewals. This means if I want apps.wiki, it's going to cost me $3,180/yr every year.
The risk I'm now wondering about:
If I build a successful brand around a gTLD, can that registrar retroactively classify that domain as a "premium" and just start 10x-ing my renewal price every year?
If this is possible, I cannot imagine how any serious site could be built on a gTLD.
I was thinking it would have to be one of the new gTLDs, where 'normal' rules don't seem to apply, but I think .co also asks silly money for any remotely decent name, and that's technically a ccTLD, even though I doubt anyone buys it as such.
> gTLD's like .land or .tech seem to set premium prices at the registrar level and apply to renewals. This means if I want apps.wiki, it's going to cost me $3,180/yr every year.
AIUI premium domains renew at a relatively normal price, so there may be a rule that states they can't charge premium rates for renewals (and therefore decide later your name is a premium), but in the domain world I wouldn't rule anything out.
I wouldn't personally use anything but .com/.net/.org or ccTLD for a serious site anyway.
Yeah I've never used or seen the appeal of Namecheap except when they run promos. They are anything but cheap otherwise.
It may not be worth it for one or two names but transferring domains is easy (and can be done even when expired) and it can make sense to move to another registrar to save money - transfer prices are often lower than renewal prices - or if the current registrar starts to be a dick.
I've never used Godaddy, which often had 99c/$1 coupons, but noticed on tld-list.com that their .COM renewal price is $18.17. Not sure what people are getting for paying twice as much as everywhere else.
> Not sure what people are getting for paying twice as much as everywhere else.
Really, really, really bad customer support. Like they'll answer your phone calls, but they won't actually help you at all. Especially with billing issues.
I've been moving domains from Namecheap to Porkbun due to ever increasing renewal prices, it's something like $5 cheaper per domain with Porkbun. I didn't see the 15x increase you saw though.
I can vouch for iwantmyname. Great customer support that went above and beyond what they had to. They even worked with Protonmail to get my custom domain functioning.
Got it! Thanks guys - Iwantmyname actually reached out to me but I wasn't sure how legit they were since I've never used their product, but after you guys' testimonials, I think I'll add them to the next version of One Word Domains! :D
Suggest checking out Dynadot - they always run some promos and I typically get .com for 99 cents first year. Then they are $8.99 including proxy/privacy.
I had many of issues over the years that were flawlessly solved with Dynadot chat support. Issues I was unable to fix with NameCheap (who has all customer support team in Eastern-block of Europe, so "made in America" does not apply), and also GoDaddy gave me issues. Besides I had a small back-and-forth battle here on HN with Namecheap CEO (I won), but needless to say it showed how unprofessional and childish the CEO of such popular company can be.
Also Namesilo is gaining some traction. Reliable, worth trying, but no chat help.
How long did you have the domain registered before they changed it to a premium domain? That seems like something that might violate the base registry agreement. Section 2.10(c):
> The parties acknowledge that the purpose of this Section 2.10(c) is to prohibit abusive and/or discriminatory Renewal Pricing practices imposed by Registry Operator without the written consent of the applicable registrant at the time of the initial registration of the domain and this Section 2.10(c) will be interpreted broadly to prohibit such practices.
It was registered in 2014. I didn't care enough to try and fight them about it after talking with customer support, and Google domains was cheaper anyway.
EDIT: I sent an email to ICANN asking about this issue since I still have domains registered with namecheap. I will update here if they respond.
That's awesome since you have a domain that it actually happened to they should give you an answer. Mine is just a good domain that I'm hoping it doesn't happen to.
Since the types and values of premium domains can vary a lot, I think the ability for a registry to arbitrarily declare a domain as premium presents a huge risk of abuse. I've searched a lot for info relating the rules for premium domains and I've never found anything. I'm super interested to hear what ICANN tells you.
I apologize for the difficulties you are experiencing. Unfortunately, ICANN does not control the sale or pricing of domain names. Registry operators and registrars are free to charge a premium for certain names at their discretion, assuming they are otherwise in compliance with the terms and conditions of their agreements. You may refer to the registrar's domain registration agreement to identify what the specified rates and restrictions are.
A registry operator or registrar may not implement/impose abusive or discriminatory renewal pricing practices without the written consent of the applicable registrant at the time of initial registration. This includes, for example, the requirement for advance notification of any price increase and the right to renew the registration at the price prior to such increase for a period of up to 10 years (i.e., the price may be locked in).
With reference to the Expired Registration Recovery Policy (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/errp-2013-02-28-en), Registrars must make their renewal fees, post-expiration renewal fees (if different), and redemption/restore fees reasonably available to registered name holders and prospective registered name holders at the time of registration of a gTLD name. At a minimum, these fees must be clearly displayed on the registrar's website and a link to these fees must be included in the registrar's registration agreements.
You may also contact the registry operator for (TLD) for more information on the pricing of their domains.
You can find the registry's contact information via this link: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
If you feel the Registrar's fees were not properly disclosed or posted on their website, you may submit the Registrar Standards Complaint form (https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/r...) to ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Team. They will review your complaint and reply to you within 5 business days.
I had the same thing happen!
I bought a domain a long while back, it auto-renewed and charged me more than $500 for 1 year. I've never used the domain properly and would have just let it lapse, they did warn me of the pending auto-renewal but I ignored it thinking it would cost $30 or something.
That's crazy! Tbh it's kind of a jerk move on the domain registrar's side - by labeling a certain TLD as "Premium" they get to charge extra on the renewal/registration fees. Pretty unethical I'd say :(
> They claim there's still an English word (an adjective) that's available as a .com domain but apparently it's not possible to see what it is from their site.
Weird - I just checked it on both Namecheap and Godaddy and apparently it's still available. Will double-check with the WHOIS database now. Thanks for letting me know!
Sure thing, I really appreciate your site by the way! There actually are services that list good available domain names already but they all want to sell you the list before you can even know if their list is any good, so I've never bothered.
As for extra-small, I used Google Domains to check it, it certainly seems to be registered as of May 16th.
I did some more digging, it appears that namecheap (or another registrar/reseller) squatted it and is reselling it as a premium domain for $190.
I suppose in the most technical sense, it is available, but my assumption was that this was a list of unregistered domains rather than say an AfterNIC competitor. Would it be possible to note in your database which domains are unregistered and which are being scalped?
Interesting! I didn't know that Namecheap was into domain name squatting but I guess the cat's out of the bag now! As for the note, I'll have to figure out how to do that because right now, all I can do is filter out the premium domains - which I suppose are the ones that are being scalped, right?
Also, thank you for your kind words! And wow, I didn't know that people would actually sell lists like this - I was just building something that I knew I would want to use without really expecting anything in return, and I guess a lot of people found it useful too! :D
Yeah, I've been trying to find legible and pronounceable one-word .com domains but to no avail...the only ones I found were words like injudiciously.com or diarrhoeic.com haha
Would appreciate some suggestions on what to do to improve on this!
Decent ones become available as dropped domains from time to time. The whole dropping domain process is convoluted, gross and benefits big players, but I have seen some decent ones fall through the cracks.
I lost quixote.com to a missed renewal e-mail and my being too cheap to pay the $20 fee for the expired domain thinking I could pick it up when it was released (in hindsight, ridiculously dumb). To make things worse, it was picked up by a Los Angeles film equipment company and for a while when I was taking grad math classes at CSULB, I would drive past a parking lot filled with trucks with quixote.com emblazoned on the side. It still gives me a little indigestion to think about that.
God, that sounds awful! I'm so sorry that happened to you :(
This also goes to show how big the domain aftermarket is - perhaps next time you could list your domains on sites like Dan.com, where they'll renew it for you automatically and help you find buyers who are willing to pay for your domain?
Interesting! Though I think there are sites that track newly-dropped domains - park.io is one of them - and they are doing it pretty well already so I definitely recommend checking them out!
Yeah, I just checked them out and they seem pretty legit. Gonna start using them to scout for good domain names and perhaps even find a way to integrate their list into One Word Domains :D
I'm thinking of training a deep learning model on the top 10,000 startup names and use it to generate available .com domain names that could potentially be used for future projects as well. Not sure how feasible this is gonna be but I'm definitely gonna give it a try!
Yeah, there are certainly a lot of really cool products out there that does this...namelix.com is one of them as well. But damn, I really love Zilpa's UX! Thanks for sharing! :D
You bring up a good point, and I've been pondering about this for a while now - do you think I should remove all the hyphens from the domains before querying them? Like, instead of "extra-small.com", should I be querying "extrasmall.com" instead?
Yes I am! And I totally get it - I'm pretty much a branding geek myself. I've been debating whether to remove the dashes even when I first started building the site, and this just gives me more reason to remove them from the word list. Stay tuned for the next update! ;)
Yeah I wouldn’t ever use a hyphenated domain for your primary site. Ok to register it and 301 redirect it to your site, but if you use it for your primary site you will lose traffic to the non hyphenated version.
Oooh, I love this idea! Can totally see how this could replace random number generators and make the whole user experience - however brief it might be - 10 times as amazing! Great choice!
This reminds me a bit of http://www.taco.com which is delightfully 1996 vintage design. I wonder how much money they've been offered to sell or lease the domain for something like ubereats/doordash Mexican food delivery.
Yes! I'm actually considering adding a "Featured Listings" section where you can list your domains - feel free to sign up on the newsletter and I'll let you know when it's ready! :D
Hi Steven! Nice work here and I'm really inspired by the design, especially because this is your first web-app from scratch.
I've always wanted to learn frontend programming/ design but am intimidated by CSS/ Bootstrap since there are too many screen sizes to take account of. Could you recommend resources/ links to learn more about frontend design/ programming? Thank you!
Hey Adam! Thanks a lot for your kind words! And I totally get where you're coming from - I've always been intimidated by responsive designs as well, but then I learned about percentages and screen-size specific designs and though the process is a little tedious, I was able to finally make my designs responsive and conducive on different screen sizes.
As for resources, I usually refer a lot to CSS Tricks, Codepen.io, W3 Schools, GeeksforGeeks, and good old StackOverflow when I'm building my websites. Hope this helps! Also, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter - I would love to keep in touch with you there!
I think you should totally track the .it TLD, it's the Italian one but works wonderfully for word plays in English (and if iirc I've seen a few websites taking advantage of it).
Some straightforward examples that come to mind would be buy.it, ship.it, design.it etc., you name(.)it ;)
Edit: also, being the Italian TLD I'm guessing quite a few English words are still available
It has opened to everyone about a year ago (with some minimal paperwork), it's cheapish ($33 from Namecheap I believe) and makes fun domains (truth.is, acting.is). It is also one of the least squatted cc domains, likely because it isn't available from most places like GoDaddy.
It also doesn't hurt that Iceland is a stable, independent and protective of rights. I worry about .io and wouldn't want to lock a business into that domain space.
Interesting - you're not the first person to recommend the .is TLD! I'll certainly look into it add it if there's enough demand for it! Thanks for letting me know!
Thanks for the suggestion! I've been a fan of the .it TLD especially with products like repl.it repping the brand so I'll definitely consider adding it in my next update!
Do you need to be, or can you have a "designated person" in the EU? Higher end registrars are happy to supply designated people for address requirement purposes.
Hmm I own some one to two word domains that are spelled differently (British vs us spelling) ie: Teale.com, splitcheque.com and others like calendur.com or ciaolongbao.com and juantons.com - all saved for the eventual day I have enough money and time to do whatever project I had planned for them. Lol
Hahaha I know the feeling - I've had my fair share of unused domains under my belt back in the days but I had to let go of them because of the hefty renewal fees :'(
Hope you hold on to yours for as long as you can - or sell/lease them for a nice profit on Dan.com!
Yeah it's kinda funny - I recently logged into my Google Search Console and realized that my site has been ranking for some rather questionable keywords like "housewives handjobs" and even "ampland", simply because the dictionary I used has those words. :'D
On one hand they give amazing suggestions and prove useful to small scale devs like me and others coming here.
On the other hand, a few weeks from now most of them will be snatched by squatters, essentially rendering them useless for small scale devs like me and others coming here.
Hahaha, I'm sorry about this! I've come to realize how this site can be used with malignant intent - even domain registrars could be stalking this site and bump up the prices for domains that people have been viewing a lot. I guess I can just hope that these things don't actually happen and that I've built a tool that can help people find their dream domains. :')
I recommend adding .is. Recently opened up and plenty of single words available, partially because they are only available for purchase from a few sites - NameCheap is the best and cheapest.
Sure! Feel free to add a suggestion at the "Suggest a TLD" section on the homepage - I'm trying to gauge which TLD is to most wanted to figure out which one to support next. ;)
Yup! As I mentioned in a previous comment, I'm thinking of training a deep learning model on the top 10,000 startup names and use it to generate available .com domain names that could potentially be in the format of a two-word/three-word domains too! Not sure how feasible this is gonna be but I'm definitely gonna give it a try!
Maybe you could do something with 2 words that are short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and memorable. I was able to register an 8 letter .com like that (2x 4-letter words) a couple years ago.
Yup! I mentioned this in a previous comment but I'm thinking of training a deep learning model on the top 10,000 startup names and use it to generate available .com domain names that could potentially be in the format of a two-word domain too! Not sure how feasible this is gonna be but I'm definitely gonna give it a try!
The fact that you can't open any of the sub links in new tabs (1 domain left, notify me) is just so damn frustrating. why make this as some stupid one page app?!
I apologize for the faulty user experience - I gotta admit, the file structure for my app is rather rudimentary, as this was my first time building a Flask app and I didn't really put much thought into file structuring.
I'll make note of this and maybe make some changes to this in future versions of the app. Thanks a lot for your feedback!
I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to be too rude to you - I'm usually so polite online the rare times I even post.. its just that there's so many damn sites these days that do it - it totally breaks the normal/traditional browsing experience.
Again, thanks for being so cool, I didn't mean to really direct that at you- it was just a general "old man yells at cloud" kind of thing.
Nooo, don't need to apologize, I really appreciate the direct feedback - it's the kind of feedback that really helps you improve the user experience for your product after all! So yeah, thank you so much again for the feedback, and thanks for being so encouraging! :D
I just got a domain for the first time yesterday, and decided to go with migadu.com instead.
You can forward mail to/from gmail with it basically the same, it has a very low sending limit on the free plan (but I'm not sure if that applies to mail forwarded from gmail), and it claims to attach a footer on the free plan (like forwardmail.net does), but it doesn't actually seem to do so to mail forwarded from gmail. https://www.migadu.com/en/guides/gmail.html
Meanwhile it has it's own webmail/pop3/smtp servers so it will be easy to move away from gmail entirely in the future.
I also just really liked the tone of the website, I have a lot more confidence in them not doing scummy things than I do in forwardmail.net not doing scummy things (though that is just based on reading a website, not the most reliable indicator ever).
Anyways, we will see in a few months if I think I made the right choice.
I really like Migadu is offering - since I don't really send that many emails at the moment, I think the 10-email limit isn't too bad! And if it doesn't really attach a footer, that's even better! Thanks for sharing!
I'm the founder of Forward Email. We are 100% open source and privacy focused. We're the only service like this. Nobody compares in terms of respecting your right to privacy.
There is absolutely NO footer on the free plan. Where are you getting this information from? Are you just making false attacks to support your own service?
Note that the "free plan" comment was about migadu's service not your service, migadu only ever adds text to the email on the free plan (as far as I can tell).
PS. The link in the TOC to that line in the faq is broken, presumably because of the extra dash before "in".
PPS. I have no relation to migadu except that I just signed up for it. The first time I heard of it was yesterday.
Migadu also limits you number of going mails a day. This is insanely bad practice, not to mention... have you read their Terms and Privacy policies? Steer clear for sure.
> Migadu also limits you number of going mails a day.
So does gmail (in their case to somewhere between roughly 150 and 500 depending on how you use the service). So does basically everyone if they don't want to get marked as a spammer and have their emails not delivered.
Migadu billing based on the number of emails per day is novel (to me), but having a limit is normal. Billing based on emails per day seems reasonable. The limit isn't strictly enforced either (per their website: https://www.migadu.com/en/drawbacks.html).
> have you read their Terms and Privacy policies
I have. They seem both reasonably short and not at all obnoxious. What issues do you have with them?
To give you guys some backstory, I was dabbling around with Flask the other day and decided to build something that I would’ve loved to use when I was trying to find a good name for my startup - a database of all the available one-word domain names out there. It’s a pretty straightforward idea but somehow I’ve never been able to find a resource like this online so I decided to make one myself.
Also, since this is my first time building a web-app from scratch, I'd appreciate any constructive criticism you guys have for me - don't be afraid to tear me apart with your feedback. As of right now, here are a few features that I am planning to add to the website:
- A synonym feature, where you can click on each domain and it'll show you synonyms to that domain that are available (I was actually planning to post about OWD on Hacker News today but I was met with a few obstacles when trying to build this feature, so I had to postpone the launch)
- A "staff picks" section for each TLD page
- .dev TLD page - gotta give back to the dev community!
Let me know what you guys think about these features. Also, please let me know any suggestions that you might have that could make this better. Thanks a lot!
P.S.: Also, I'm thinking about removing domains that were purchased from the "most popular" and "recently viewed" sections - should I do that or should I leave them there? I'm just worried that by leaving them there it's a little misleading - people might think it's still available.
~ Steven