A website's name, formally known as a domain name, can make or break the site's success. Each name must be unique, which creates a race to claim the perfect, brand-building online address that's easy for visitors to find.
The most expensive website names have sold for tens of millions of dollars, according to a new study by Hostinger, a web hosting provider. “It’s fascinating to see how much money has exchanged hands for specific domain names—the cost of the seven names in the list adds up to more than $100 million," says a spokesperson from Hostinger.
But are these website names worth all that? While some of the priciest names sold for top dollar have achieved a huge number of monthly visitors, others fell flat. Here are the top seven biggest-ticket domain name sales of all time.
1. Voice.com
- Cost: $30 million
- Purchased: 2019
- Current monthly traffic: 90,000
- What is it? Voice.com actually has nothing to do with voices. Rather, it's a marketplace where users can create NFTs and list them for sale. Voice.com aims to "empower artists from all walks of life to build sustainable art practices by using the power of blockchain technology," according to the site description. It is both the most expensive and least visited site on the list.
2. 360.com
- Cost: $17 million
- Purchased: 2015
- Current monthly traffic: 24 million
- What is it? A Chinese company called 360 Security Technology bought 360.com from Vodafone in February 2015. It's now just the 154th biggest website in China, proving that it takes more than money to secure the number-one spot.
3. NFTs.com
- Cost: $15 million
- Purchased: 2022
- Current monthly traffic: Not available
- What is it? This one's a bit of a wildcard. NFTs.com was purchased in August 2022, which makes it the most recent sale on the list. At the time, demand for the digital artwork was already on its way down from a January 2022 peak. Today, the site has no clickable buttons or functionality; it seems the owners have abandoned it. Traffic is too low to be estimated by SimilarWeb, the tool Hostinger used to pull those numbers. It's a digital ghost town.
4. Sex.com
- Cost: $13 million
- Purchased: 2010
- Current monthly traffic: 64 million
- What is it? Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sex.com attracts the most traffic on the list. The purpose of the site is self-explanatory, hence the lack of an image for this one. The domain name was sold through an auction in November 2010 after its former owner, Escom, declared bankruptcy and was forced to give it up, CNET reports. A little-known company called Clover Holdings, registered to the island of St. Vincent, snapped the website name up $13 million. Recently, it went back on the market, as Clover tries to flip its investment. Minimum bids start at $20 million.
5. Fund.com
- Cost: $12 million
- Purchased: 2008
- Current monthly traffic: 293,000
- What is it? Fund.com is an investment website that offers financial services and informational content. It sold at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 for $12 million. In 2019, it went up for sale again, DomainInvesting.com reports, closing at an estimated $2.5 million, a steep decline in value. Today, the site boldly calls itself "Your #1 source for financial information" and rakes in a solid amount of traffic.
6. Hotels.com
- Cost: $11 million
- Purchased: 2001
- Current monthly traffic: 44.5 million
- What is it? Hotels.com has made quite a business for itself since acquiring the domain name in 2001 (the oldest sale on the list) for $11 million. The site helps its visitors make hotel reservations, appropriately.
7. Tesla.com
- Cost: $11 million
- Purchased: 2014
- Current monthly traffic: 16.9 million
What is it? Electric vehicle maker Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning (not Elon Musk, who took over in 2008), but the company didn't purchase Tesla.com until 2014. Musk later said it took 10 years to secure the domain name. Eventually the company took it over from Silicon Valley engineer Stuart Grossman for around $11 million. That's a drop in the bucket for Tesla, which raked in $81.5 billion in revenue in 2022. The site receives nearly 17 million monthly visitors, as all Tesla vehicle and energy storage product sales go through it.