Your domain is your personal brand's address — the thing you say out loud in interviews and print on your resume. A clean one is worth the ~$10/year many times over. Pair this with How to Host Your Portfolio for Free and Personal Branding for Professionals.

Best Choice: Your Name

yourname.com is ideal — memorable, professional, and timeless. If it is taken, try in roughly this order:

  • yourname.dev / .design / .me (great for the matching field)
  • firstnamelastname.com
  • yournamehq.com, getyourname.com, or hey-yourname.com

Naming Rules

  • Short and easy to say aloud without spelling it
  • No hyphens or numbers if you can avoid them
  • Avoid words that are easy to mishear or misspell
  • Make sure it reads cleanly in a resume header (How to Add Your Portfolio Link to Your Resume)

TLD Tips

  • .com still reads as the most credible default
  • .dev / .design / .io are well-respected in their fields
  • Avoid obscure, spammy-looking TLDs

Where to Buy

Namecheap, Cloudflare Registrar, or Porkbun offer fair pricing with no nasty renewal spikes. Turn on WHOIS privacy (usually free) to keep your details private.

After You Buy

Point it at your free host or your portfolio builder site (How to Host Your Portfolio for Free), enable HTTPS, then add it to your resume and LinkedIn. Help people find it with Portfolio SEO: Get Found.

Keep Your Resume and Portfolio in Sync

Your resume, your LinkedIn, and your portfolio should tell the same story — same name, same headline, same top projects — just at different levels of depth. A recruiter who sees a 'Full Stack Developer' resume and a portfolio headlined 'Aspiring Designer' gets confused, and confusion loses interviews. Lock the resume down first with the ATS score checker and an ATS-friendly template, then mirror that exact positioning in your portfolio. When they reinforce each other, every recruiter touchpoint pushes you forward. See How to Add Your Portfolio Link to Your Resume for placing the link correctly.

Common Mistakes

  • A domain so clever no one can spell it
  • Hyphens/numbers that get lost when spoken
  • Forgetting to renew (set auto-renew)
  • A flashy TLD that undercuts credibility

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I use .com or a newer TLD?

.com is the safest default; .dev/.design are excellent if they match your field. Pick what you can say cleanly out loud.

My name is taken — what now?

Add your field (.dev), use firstlast.com, or a small prefix like get-/hey-. Keep it short and spellable.

How much should a domain cost?

Around $10–15/year. Avoid registrars with huge renewal jumps; Cloudflare and Porkbun are fair.

Build Your Portfolio Now

You do not need to code a site from scratch or spend a weekend wrestling with a website builder. Turn your existing resume into a live, shareable portfolio website in minutes with the TailorCV portfolio builder — choose a template, upload your CV, tweak the details, and publish a link you can drop straight onto your resume and LinkedIn. Before you start applying, run your resume through the free ATS score checker and switch to an ATS-friendly template so your portfolio and resume tell one clean, consistent story to every recruiter.