Best for… / E-commerce Stores
Best TLDs for E-commerce Stores
For an online store, .com is non-negotiable if attainable — checkout pages on unfamiliar TLDs convert worse because familiarity is conversion infrastructure. The best retail fallbacks are .shop (clear intent, wide availability, cheaper renewals than .store) and .co. Watch .store's ~$50 renewals; .shop does the same job for less.
Commerce runs on trust, and domain trust is mostly inherited from familiarity. Shoppers hesitate at addresses they've never seen before — pick accordingly.
Skip these
.online — bargain-TLD vibes at the exact moment (checkout) you can't afford them.
Common questions
What domain should an online store use?
Use .com if you can — shoppers hesitate at checkout on addresses they've never seen, and that hesitation costs conversions. If the .com is taken, .shop is the best retail TLD (clear intent, wide availability), with .co as a clean stand-in. Avoid bargain-signal TLDs at the exact moment (checkout) you can't afford them.
Is .shop or .store better for e-commerce?
.shop — it does the identical job as .store but renews meaningfully cheaper (.store runs about $50/yr). Neither carries a trust edge over the other, so it comes down to price, and .shop wins the arithmetic.