.com is “a trust signal”

Cal Short is the Founder of a company called Reword, an AI-based article writing tool. The startup has used the Reword.co ccTLD domain name since it was founded within the last year. Last week, Short announced that his company secured its brand matching Reword.com domain name. The cost of the domain name was $85,000.

After acquiring Reword.com and after moving Reword’s website to the .com domain name, Short shared some reasons for acquiring this matching domain name for nearly six figures:

Short made a shrewd decision to acquire Reword.com. It will ensure customers and prospects aren’t confused when they visit the .com domain name. It will also prevent a competitor or someone else from acquiring the domain name. This, in turn, will ensure emails aren’t mis-delivered and lost. Finally, Short acknowledges the trust factor that comes with operating on a .com domain name, particularly when compared to operating on an alternative extension like .co.

Although Short ended up paying more than he had originally agreed to pay to acquire the domain name due to missing a payment deadline, he likely saved a considerable amount of money had Reword continued to grow in the interim.

Paying $85,000 to upgrade to a .com domain name may seem like a sizable sum of money, but not switching to the .com domain name could have come at a substantial cost to the brand.