Hi DigitalPoint members, I'm a new member. We're a no profit association. I would have a suggestion by a experienced communinity as this one. I have known this site by a my friend's suggestion. Our name is miglioraora (in english improvenow). For you it's correct that a no profit association has a domain and not a subdomain? Some users said that have a domain is a waste of money for a no profit association. What do you think about it? Thanks very much Andrea
.com, .net, .org domains cost about 10$ per year. I don't know how it is with .it domains, but I have seen many non profit organizations having .info domain which costs about 1$ per year, which is really nothing. I believe that by subdomain you mean domain.blogspot.com or domain.wordpress.com. Those never look professional and they shouldn't be used by any serious organization. Profit or non profit, it makes no difference.
I'd say .com and your own ccTLD (like .it) are the ones to choose from. If you have an international non profit, go for .com. That said, if you have a non profit that just operates in one country, it might be better getting your own ccTLD. I think it's just about your own preferences. And also about how .com relates to your own ccTLD. I think in some countries ccTLDs are used a lot and people know them a lot better than .com. And in some countries the opposite is true: .com is well known nationwide and ccTLDs are not so big deal. I could think Italy belongs to the former group - though it's just a hunch, don't have data to back it up
Why not .com? You can get one for around $1 from GoDaddy with a coupon code. If OP registers .info or .org and somebody else snatches the .com and develops it, there might be confusion about which site is the intended destination of the visitor. Especially if the visitor is an average visitor who knows .com but isn't well aware of .org and .info. Just my 2 cents.
1. GoDaddy is the worst registrar. 2. All doubts about .com and org are groundless .com is not suggested because this is for companies.
How about NameCheap with the coupon BUYTHEDOMAIN? Just $5.99 for the first year. Not that much. And NameCheap is better than GoDaddy, isn't it? That said, the most annoying thing about GoDaddy is that they try to sell you thousand things before they actually let you to pay for the domain. In other words, they try to upsell a lot. If you can navigate past that and not click those add-ons (which actually requires some attention), GD isn't that bad. At least for plain domain registrations. How about this if you have doubts about .com being unsuitable for non-profits: Register all big three. Com, net and org. Then use .org as your real domain and redirect .com and .net to that .org domain. This way you get best of the both worlds. You'll have a "true" non-profit domain without anybody thinking it might have commercial intentions. On the other hand, other people can't maliciously register .com and .net because you own them and have implemented a redirect. If somebody types yournonprofit.com or yournonprofit.net to the address bar and hits enter, he will still arrive at the right destination. Problem solved! Edit: corrected bad wording.
If you are a legitimate non-profit company (and stand for a cause that I will support*) then I will give you a domain name and push it to your namecheap account for you (provided that you can prove 100% that you are a non-profit and are registered and legitimate etc etc). For non-profit, I like .org, I feel that works best for non-profits (and I wish that they had maintained .org specifically for non-profits), but the name and extension you come up with is up to you. PM me once you have choosen a name that is available and suitable for your cause, and be sure to be able to prove you are legit (you will need a namecheap account for the push).
Whatsoever is the TLD and whosoever is the Registrar, you must get full domain rights and full freedom with your domain. Any locking or condition from the Registrar side or any trouble in transferring the domain to another registrar must not be acceptable. We are in industry since 1998 and we have tested all the Registrars. Except Resellerclub, we did not find out full freedom anywhere. They do not force to buy other products also.