.site: the catch-all extension for projects with no category

A TLD named after the thing you are building

Most extensions describe an industry (.shop, .bank) or a place (.london). .site describes the product itself: a website. Because no sector is implied, it suits a personal portfolio, a prototype, a club page, a short-lived campaign or a staging environment equally. The cost of that flexibility is that the name carries no signal, so everything depends on the label to its left. yourname.site reads as a personal page; brand.site reads as a second-choice address unless the brand is strong.

Registry and timeline

• RegistryRadix Technologies Inc. SEZC
• Delegated16 March 2015 (to DotSite Inc.)
• Moved within RadixAugust 2021, February 2024
• EligibilityOpen

The IANA record is dated the same days as .online: report on 12 March 2015 and delegation on 16 March 2015, originally to DotSite Inc. It sits in the same Radix portfolio as .online and .store, with Tucows listed as the technical contact. If you are comparing the two older Radix generics, the .online guide covers the sibling.

What people actually put on it

• Developer and designer portfolios
• Landing pages for a product still waiting for a better domain
• School, event and community pages
• Temporary test and demo hostnames
• Link-in-bio style single pages

Short-lived use matters for the data picture: extensions used for throwaway sites churn a lot, so you tend to see many registrations that are not renewed.

Reputation: what the named sources say

Spamhaus's research on the supply chain of cybercrime domains named SITE among five new TLDs with unusually high counts of reported domains, and its ranking tables have in some periods placed .site in the top dozen abused gTLDs. CybercrimeInfoCenter's spam-activity tables for June to August 2023 placed .site second for malicious spam domain registrations. These sources measure different things and cover different dates, so the neutral reading is: open and cheap registration attracts abuse, and .site is one of those extensions. Legitimate owners should treat mail authentication as mandatory.

Price behaviour

Registrars regularly advertise .site at a promotional first-year rate far under the standard one, and it is one of the extensions commonly used in bundle deals. The renewal is the number that matters, as with all budget gTLDs. Because supply is huge, resale of ordinary .site names is thin; domain investing basics explain why a cheap extension rarely produces resale value.

Strengths and limits

If you want to switch later

Migrating a live site to a better domain means 301 redirects, updating DNS and email, and waiting for search engines to catch up; keep the .site as a redirect for a few years. If you are unsure of the final name, choosing a TLD for a startup is worth reading before buying anything you intend to keep.

Spotting good and bad .site names

Quality depends entirely on the label. Names that work are personal (janedoe.site), descriptive of a project (recipeindex.site) or a short coined brand. Weak names string keywords together or imitate a bigger brand. Remember that a visitor who is unsure of the suffix may type .com instead, so check what the .com of the same label points to; if it belongs to someone else, confusion is likely.

Using drop data on a high-churn extension

Throwaway use means a steady flow of names leaving the zone. A disappearance means the name was removed from delegation, normally by deletion but possibly by suspension, and the zone file says nothing about owner or backlinks. Newly registered domain lists show what is being taken, and expired domains explains what to check before bidding on a drop. On an extension with so little resale value, most dropped names are not worth a backorder.

Security and mail setup

Treat the domain as a fresh sender. Add SPF, DKIM and DMARC, keep a visible privacy and contact page, and warm up outgoing mail slowly. Because it sits in the same filtering bucket as other cheap generics, those habits do more for deliverability than the choice of registrar.

Decision checklist before registering

1. Is the project temporary or experimental? If so, .site is a sensible, low-cost trial.
2. Will you rely on email from this domain? If yes, budget time for authentication and warm-up.
3. Is the matching .com taken by an unrelated site? If so, expect some visitors to land there by mistake.
4. What is the renewal price in year two and year three, not only year one?
5. Could you migrate later without losing links? Plan redirects from the first day.

If most answers are comfortable, .site is a practical, unglamorous choice. If you answer "no" to the first question, a more established extension is likely worth the higher price.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the registry for .site?

Radix Technologies Inc. SEZC is the manager shown by IANA. The TLD was delegated to DotSite Inc. in March 2015 and moved within the Radix group in 2021 and 2024.

Is .site suitable for a business website?

It works for small or early-stage ventures, but most established businesses prefer .com or a more descriptive extension, because .site signals nothing about what you do.

Does .site rank well in Google?

Search engines treat it as a generic TLD, so it neither helps nor hurts directly. Content quality and links decide.

Why do I see .site links in spam?

Published data from Spamhaus and others show cheap open TLDs, including .site, are over-represented in abuse. That reflects registration patterns, not a flaw in individual legitimate sites.

Will my .site price rise at renewal?

Commonly yes, if you registered during a promotion. Check the stated renewal price before buying.