When Does a Canadian Business Actually Need Both .CA and .COM? (1.Viewing)

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NiceNIC

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I don’t think the answer is automatically yes, but I also think more businesses should at least think about it properly. If the business is very clearly Canada-first and mostly serves a domestic audience, .ca often does the job just fine.

But once there’s any real concern around expansion, brand protection, or cross-border visibility, the decision looks a bit different. Then it stops being a simple .ca versus .com question and becomes more of a “what happens if I leave one open?” question.

Would be interested to hear how people here are looking at this now, especially from the perspective of small businesses rather than domain investors.
 
I think its never been more important for any business serving Canadian customers to clearly show they are Canadian, so .CA is more than "just fine" - its nearly mandatory. Even if you're lucky enough to score the .com equivalent, the .ca should be forward facing for Canadian customers.

Of course if your business crosses borders, then you have to ask yourself, does being Canadian help your cause or hurt it? Personally, I'd have multiple domains, the .com if possible, otherwise a ccTLD for each country - for seo and user familiarity.
 
For Mapledots I have the .com and the .CA and I used to separate them for .com and .CA sales but now I just forward the .com to the .ca

I'm finding the .CA builds trust even when selling to other countries. People seem to trust Canadians because we are not high on the fraud list like Nigeria for example.
 
rlm said:
completely unrelated but, MapleDots @MapleDots - nice work on "cleaning" things up quickly, lol. No chance for the dust to settle, haha.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we block VPN's from registering now so once we add the country (in this case Poland) they cannot register using a VPN.

We allow viewing and logging in but you cannot register an account using a VPN. So if we block the country they have to use a VPN and then that is blocked because VPN's cannot register.

Caught it pretty fast and the person is deleted and banned for spam.
 
Does .com still have the same air of 'prestige' it once enjoyed in Canada? Did it ever enjoy such an elevated status in Canada? I don't think I'm old enough to answer that question. The political climate in recent years has either slightly tarnished its standing and/or .ca has become even more important than it once was for similar reasons. I'm working on a legal tech product that serves Canadians. I own both the .ca and the .com, and I've been flipping back and forth on which domain extension is right. The product will eventually handle trust payments, claims, etc. and the .com seems more fit for purpose owing to its entrenched "institutional" feel, whether real or perceived. I can market the .ca and redirect it to the .com. That's probably what I'm leaning towards. I don't have immediate global expansion plans for the project, but the .com will support that expansion if it happens.
 
rlm said:
I think its never been more important for any business serving Canadian customers to clearly show they are Canadian, so .CA is more than "just fine" - its nearly mandatory. Even if you're lucky enough to score the .com equivalent, the .ca should be forward facing for Canadian customers.

Of course if your business crosses borders, then you have to ask yourself, does being Canadian help your cause or hurt it? Personally, I'd have multiple domains, the .com if possible, otherwise a ccTLD for each country - for seo and user familiarity.
Click to expand...
That’s also why I like the idea of having multiple domains, as long as there is one clear primary domain. For most small businesses, having the other domains forward cleanly to the main one usually keeps things simple for customers and avoids unnecessary brand confusion.
MapleDots said:
For Mapledots I have the .com and the .CA and I used to separate them for .com and .CA sales but now I just forward the .com to the .ca

I'm finding the .CA builds trust even when selling to other countries. People seem to trust Canadians because we are not high on the fraud list like Nigeria for example.
Click to expand...
Either way, I agree that the key is avoiding two competing websites. One primary domain, clean forwarding, consistent email usage, and clear branding usually works better than splitting traffic across multiple versions of the same name.
Named said:
Does .com still have the same air of 'prestige' it once enjoyed in Canada? Did it ever enjoy such an elevated status in Canada? I don't think I'm old enough to answer that question. The political climate in recent years has either slightly tarnished its standing and/or .ca has become even more important than it once was for similar reasons. I'm working on a legal tech product that serves Canadians. I own both the .ca and the .com, and I've been flipping back and forth on which domain extension is right. The product will eventually handle trust payments, claims, etc. and the .com seems more fit for purpose owing to its entrenched "institutional" feel, whether real or perceived. I can market the .ca and redirect it to the .com. That's probably what I'm leaning towards. I don't have immediate global expansion plans for the project, but the .com will support that expansion if it happens.
Click to expand...
That sounds like a sensible direction. If both domains point users into the same clear brand experience, the extension choice probably becomes less confusing. What matters most is that customers feel they’re dealing with one trusted product, not two separate entities.
 

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