Protect Your Startup Name Before Launch
Before your startup name becomes public, secure the domains and brand variations customers could associate with your company. Name.ai analyzes your name, prioritizes the domains worth registering, identifies gaps, helps acquire unavailable names and continues monitoring after launch.
Who it's for
Startups finalising their brand name and preparing to launch
Founders who've chosen a name but haven't yet gone public
Early-stage companies that have secured funding and are about to increase visibility
Any team that needs to lock down their brand's digital presence before the world finds out
Why startups should secure their domain before launch
Once your brand name is public, two things happen simultaneously: legitimate interest in your brand grows, and so does the number of people trying to profit from it.
Domain squatters watch press releases, Product Hunt launches, App Store listings, and social media for new brand names — and they act quickly.
Press releases
A public name is a searchable name
Product Hunt
Launch day is peak exposure
App Store
Listings are indexed and scraped
The window between "we've chosen our name" and "we've gone public" is the safest, cheapest time to secure your domain strategy. Name.ai Startup Protection closes that window.
The launch sequence
01
Name chosen
Internally agreed, not yet announced. This is the moment to start.
02
Domain sweep
Variation analysis across typos, plurals, hyphens and relevant TLDs.
03
Priority registrations
Register the Secure tier while the names are still cheap.
04
Acquisition
Approach owners of any high-priority variation already taken.
05
Monitoring
Watch the rest, continuously, after you go public.
What's included in
Startup Protection
Five layers of protection, designed to cover every angle before and after you go public.
01
AI-powered brand variation analysis
AI-powered sweep of typos, plurals, hyphens, and common misspellings of your brand name across all relevant TLDs.
The sweep starts from how your name is actually typed and misheard, not from a fixed suffix list, so a name with an ambiguous spelling produces a wider variation set than a name with only one plausible rendering.
02
Priority domain registration list
Ranked list of which domains to register immediately, which to monitor, and which to ignore — based on real squatting risk data.
The tiering logic is the same one used for established brands in defensive domain registration, scoped to a name with no public footprint yet — which is why the Secure tier is usually smaller and cheaper before launch than after it.
03
Competitor and TLD gap analysis
See which TLDs your direct competitors have secured — so you can close the same gaps for your brand.
What comparable companies in your category already hold is the most useful signal available pre-launch: it shows which extensions proved worth owning for businesses with your profile, and where your coverage would be thinner than theirs on day one.
04
Acquire domains that are already registered
If any high-priority variation is already registered, our brokers can assess and advise on acquisition options.
If a name you need is taken, you can acquire an already-registered domain through a brokered approach to the owner. Where the registration looks like deliberate squatting on your mark, trademark protection is the route that supports a formal dispute instead.
05
Monitor new brand-related registrations
Automated alerts if any monitored domain variation is registered after your launch — so you catch threats as they happen.
Post-launch alerts run on Name.ai brand protection, so the variations you chose not to register stay watched and surface the moment someone else takes one.
Which domain variations
should a startup register?
Example output for a brand called "YourBrand", shown to illustrate the shape of a plan rather than as a recommendation for your name. Your AI-powered variation analysis produces a personalised version.
Domain name
Action
Why
yourbrand.ai
AI sector signal — high demand
yourbrand.com
Universal trust — must have
yourbrand.io
Tech audience — strong secondary
yourbrand.co
.com alternative — common confusion
yourbrandapp.com
App variant — squatter target
getyourbrand.com
Common acquisition variant
yourbrand.net
Low value but low cost to protect
your-brand.com
Hyphen variant — common confusion route
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about protecting your startup name before launch
The window is open right now.
The best time to secure your domains is before anyone knows your name exists.