In Switzerland, .ch domains have always been high on the agenda and .com domains are often, but not always, booked in addition. If you launch a new brand, company or project, you should definitely consider whether it's best to add the .com domain right away. This for several reasons.

Internationalization of business activities

It may not have been an issue when the company was founded, but many business areas are becoming increasingly international. Both in e-commerce and classical activities, international markets are becoming more and more important for local companies. If you have only thought of a .ch domain at the beginning, it can be very difficult to register a suitable .com domain after an international expansion, if you did not pay attention to the fact that the .ch and the .com address are still free for the chosen name at the first registration.

Protection against cybersquatters

Unfortunately, it happens every now and then that so-called cybersquatters register other variants of a known domain name and use them to the detriment of the legitimate original trademark. If you have not yet registered a trademark in Switzerland or in the EU, it can be very difficult to get rid of such «false» domains or to take them over. Often such domains are offered at horrendous prices on international marketplaces and cause confusion among the potential customers.

Avoid wrong e-mail deliveries

The other reason for an additional .com domain name registration is less clear at first glance, but in its consequence all the more obvious. People are not precise and tend to forget things. Because .com is so popular, there are always people who assume that domains end with «.com». Many large corporations use .com for their own mail services or there are popular free webmail offers with .com extensions. For example, gmail.com, yahoo.com and outlook.com have been in circulation for many years and are billions of times widespread. People have simply gotten used to sending an email to a .com address.

Now it can happen unfortunately that a business partner or somebody else in the hurry sends an important Mail by mistake to name@yourcompany.com instead of name@yourcompany.ch Neither the sender nor you as the recipient will notice this or it will take a while until the error is noticed. Important dates, offers or contracts can suffer in their execution from it.

In the worst case, confidential information ends up with the wrong people and is redistributed on the net. Such delivery problems due to the lack of a .com domain have already occurred millions of times and will continue to occur.

Secure .ch domains as well

Of course, the whole thing also applies the other way round. If a company is based in Switzerland and only uses a .com domain, it will inevitably happen again and again that customers and business partners accidentally send an e-mail to name@yourcompany.ch, assuming that such an e-mail address probably exists or simply because of carelessness. Therefore, not only secure .com addresses, but also book the .ch extension as a Swiss company.

Please note: If the whole German language area is interesting, you should also consider the .de and .at domains right from the start. Again, the later you want to close gaps in the domain portfolio, the more difficult it will be, so be on the safe side from the very beginning.