The domain kitchen.co sold for 70,000 Euro back in February, making it one of the top ten most expensive .CO domain sales ever reported. It’s just one part of a huge trend for .CO domains and .IO domains. Many businesses are opting to use short .CO and .IO domain names instead of a longer or more expensive .COM domain. Investors are also active in the trend and are helping to drive prices up. Let’s take a deeper look at what’s happening in the domain market for each of these extensions.
CO Domain Names
The top level domain extension .CO is technically a country code domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia. In 2010, the domain extension was relaunched as a generic extension for the world. It’s an ideal domain for lots of organizations because it’s short, a common abbreviation for “company,” and is recognizable as being one letter off from COM. This extension has become widely-used by startups like AngelList or Brit + Co. Even the popular restaurant chain Taco Bell go in on the action, using the creative domain hack Ta.co for a project. While .CO has been successful for a long time, sales have picked up in recent months, both amongst businesses and domain investors. From late November 2020 to early February 2021, top public sales in addition to kitchen.co are:
Coach.co – $29,814
Roots.co – $14,500
Rail.co – $13,602
Beer.co – $12,100
Ghost.co – $11,000
Stellar.co – $10,000
These domain names would have cost a lot more in .COM, but are quite high for a non-.COM extension.
IO Domain Names
The .IO domain extension is also a country code, representing British Indian Ocean Territory. Similar to CO, .IO has also become popular through usage by companies. IO is a computing term for input/output, so .IO has become a popular domain extension for technology companies. Tech companies using .IO include hiring technology company Greenhouse, WebOps platform Pantheon, and online event platform Crowdcast. IO domain prices have increased steadily over the past five years and the trend accelerated over the past two years. Of the top ten reported .IO sales ever, six have occurred since 2019. The top reported sale of all time, bank.io, changed hands for $80,000 in December 2020. Seven .IO domains have sold for $10,000 or more from late November 2020 to early February 2021:
Bank.io – $80,000
Domain.io – $50,000
Polly.io – $28,888
Pirate.io – $19,997
Browser.io – $16,500
Inova.io – $12,000
Prestige.io – $10,495
Keep in mind that these are only the sales that were publicly disclosed. Most sales are never announced. The surge of end user interest in the .CO and .IO extensions has also renewed interest among domain investors. These investors have pushed up aftermarket sales prices for the domains, making it more challenging to invest in the extensions. Still, it’s much less competitive than the market for .COM domain names.
