Domain names for Indian businesses: .in, .com, or a subdomain?

A domain is your address on the internet — the thing between the slashes. It is a small decision that people either overthink or, more commonly, get wrong in one specific way that costs them later.

What you are actually buying

You do not buy a domain. You rent it, usually a year at a time, from a registrar. As long as you keep paying, it is yours. Stop paying and it goes back on the market, where someone else can take it.

Typical prices in India:

.com — ₹900 to ₹1,400 a year
.in — ₹500 to ₹900 a year
.co.in — similar to .in
.shop, .store, .online — often ₹200 the first year, then ₹2,000+ on renewal

That last pattern catches people. The ₹99 first-year offer renews at ten times the price, forever. Check the renewal rate, not the launch rate.

Which extension

.com if you can get it. It is what people assume and what they type by default. If your name is available as a .com, take it.

.in is an excellent choice for a business that serves India only, and it is often available when the .com is not. There is no ranking penalty. A customer in Delhi does not think twice about a .in.

.co.in works the same way and is slightly less common.

.shop / .store / .clinic / .cafe are fine, but check the renewal price and be aware that a small number of older customers still find unfamiliar endings slightly odd.

Avoid hyphens, numbers, and clever misspellings. If you have to spell it out over the phone twice, it is the wrong domain. sharmadental.in is better than sharma-dental-clinic-2024.com in every way that matters.

Picking the name

The rules are boring and they work.

Use your business name. People searching for you type your name. Do not invent something clever that has nothing to do with your board.

Short is better. Two words maximum where possible.

Say it out loud. You will read this on the phone hundreds of times. If it needs explanation, change it.

Drop "the", "India", "official", "pvt", "ltd". They add length and nothing else.

Do not stuff keywords. bestdentistindwarka.com looks like an advertisement, not a business, and it does very little for ranking.

If your exact name is taken, add your city rather than a hyphen: krishnasweetsdelhi.in reads better than krishna-sweets.in.

The mistake that traps people

This is the important part of this article.

Register the domain in your own name, on your own account, with your own email and payment method.

What happens all the time: a web designer offers to "handle everything". They register the domain on their account, build the site, and it all works fine. Two years later you want to move to someone else, or the designer stops replying, or there is a disagreement about a bill.

You then discover you do not own your own web address. Everything printed on your board, your cards, your packaging and your bills points to something you have no control over. Getting it back ranges from a difficult conversation to impossible.

The same applies to your Google Business Profile — own it on your own account, not your marketing agency's.

If someone else registered your domain already, ask them to transfer it now, while relations are good. If they resist, that answers a question you needed answered.

Where to register

Any reputable registrar is fine. What to check:

The renewal price, not just the first year.
Whether WHOIS privacy is included or costs extra.
Whether they make transferring out difficult. Some do.
That you can actually log in yourself and see the domain in your account.

What about a free subdomain?

A subdomain — something like yourbusiness.apna.live — costs nothing extra and works immediately with no DNS to configure. It is a perfectly reasonable place to start, and for a lot of small shops it is where they stay.

The honest trade-offs: it is shorter to say than a full domain and there is nothing to renew or forget, but it carries someone else's name alongside yours, and if you ever move away you lose the address rather than taking it with you.

A sensible path is to start on a subdomain, see whether the website earns its keep, and buy your own domain once you know it does. Moving later is straightforward as long as you set up the redirect properly.

If you are printing your web address on packaging, a board, or vehicle signage, buy the domain first. Changing printed material later costs more than the domain ever will.

Once you have it

Set auto-renew on, and make sure the card on file is one that will still be valid in two years. Expired domains are recoverable for a short window and then they are gone — sometimes to someone who will sell it back to you at a very unfriendly price.

Put a reminder in your calendar for a month before expiry anyway.

Apna.live gives you a free subdomain to start and connects your own domain when you are ready. See your site first.