> Stick with your national ccTLD unless it is managed by utter incompetents, in which case you have fallbacks like .eu for EU nationals, and .com, .net, .org and .info for the rest.
Disregarding the price factor for a moment, would you still prioritize "your own country's ccTLD" over .com, when registering web presence for a company with no particular local presence in its home country? I.e. should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com?
> would you still prioritize "your own country's ccTLD" over .com, when registering web presence for a company with no particular local presence in its home country?
1. Yes. It’s also a matter of marketing, of course, where the desire to have a .com might trump all other consideration.
2. If a company has no particular local presence in it’s home country, what would the concept of “home” country even mean?
The reason to prefer your own local ccTLD is to have an easier time dealing with any disputes or questions from your TLD registry. I.e. would the registry assume that they can simply contact you (and speak the local language) if anything should arise, then you will have an easier time dealing with that. If you were to be technically registered somewhere, but have no local people and no local presence, or even if your company merely seems to be of foreign origin, the TLD registry (and legal officials in general) might not deal with you very favorably.
By "local presence" I meant "markets itself to customers in that country." Especially in the digital age, a company can be "homed" in one country — have all its offices and employees there — but make a product/service that is only marketed (or even legal!) in another country.
First example that comes to mind: many of those shady crypto companies that did "ICOs" in 2017, were based in the US; but the US has regulations that block non-accredited US customers from investing in things like this. So these companies generally just ignored the US market — even blocking US visitors on their website — and instead marketed to people in every other country.
> should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com?
In this case it doesn't matter in terms of reliability. If you target the US, maybe go with .com, unless .ca brings something (if it's a pun, or if you want to highlight the fact you're a Canadian company).
Also consider the fact that the country's ccTLD is not popular in every country. In France the .fr is very popular for example, but it's not the case everywhere. I'm not sure the .us is very popular in the us for example, is it?
Disregarding the price factor for a moment, would you still prioritize "your own country's ccTLD" over .com, when registering web presence for a company with no particular local presence in its home country? I.e. should a Canadian-based company that mostly serves the US still prefer .ca to .com?
For that matter, does your advice apply to .us?