Your own domain in India: .in or .com, and what it costs
A domain like yourname.in makes a small business look established. Buying one is easy; the mistakes are in the renewals and the small print.
Updated , about 6 minutes to read
The short answer
Pick a short name close to your own or your business's, choose .in if your customers are in India and .com if they're abroad, and expect to pay roughly a few hundred to about a thousand rupees a year. Check the renewal price, not just the first-year offer, and keep the domain in your own name.
Do you need one?
Not on day one. A free address like yourname.foliopin.com works fine for a first portfolio, and you can add your own domain later without changing anything else. A domain starts to matter when people should remember your address, when you print it on visiting cards, or when you want an email like hello@yourclinic.in.
.in or .com?
- .in tells visitors you're in India, and short names are often still free. Good for clinics, tutors, shops and local services.
- .com is familiar worldwide. Good if your clients are abroad. Short .com names are mostly taken.
- .co.in is fine too, but people tend to mistype it as .in or .co.
Choosing the name
- Short, easy to spell when said aloud over the phone.
- Avoid hyphens and numbers; people forget them.
- Include your town if the plain name is taken: drmeerakochi.in reads better than drmeera-kochi-2.in.
- Say it to someone and ask them to type it. If they hesitate, try another.
What it costs, and the catch
Prices change, but as a rough guide a .in costs a few hundred rupees a year and a .com somewhere around ₹800 to ₹1,200. The catch is the renewal: many sellers offer a cheap first year and charge much more from the second. Look for the renewal price before you pay, and turn on auto-renew or a reminder, because an expired domain can be bought by someone else.
Make sure the domain is registered in your name or your business's, with your email. If a web designer buys it for you in their name, moving it later can be painful.
Connecting it to your website
Connecting means changing two settings, called DNS records, where you bought the domain. It sounds technical, but it's usually copy and paste, and the change takes from a few minutes to a few hours to work everywhere.
On Foliopin Premium you can connect a domain you already own under Web address, and the screen shows the exact records to add and tells you when it's connected. If you'd rather have someone handle the domain and the whole website, CloudtoBuild, the company behind Foliopin, does that from ₹599 a month.