There are a few cases where it’s okay to use another extension. When the “.com” domain name is available at a reasonable price which you can afford in the future, but not now.  For example, let’s say HempLively.co is available for $15 and HempLIvely.com costs $3,000.  Well, in a few months, you can afford $3,000 so you decide to gamble on the fact that it will still be available by then. When the “.com” domain name is so expensive, no one will ever pay that amount to mimic your brand.  For example, let’s say HempLively.co is available for $15 and HempLIvely.com costs $100,000.  You should be safe to hope no one will pay that amount of money to mimic your business.  And by the time it may be worth it for someone to do that, you’d be so established that it wouldn’t make a difference.  Plus, by then you may be able to afford it yourself. When you’re a local company that’s not doing eCommerce and the sole purpose of your website is for Brand Recognition in your local market.  In this case, your Google Business listing on Google Maps will get you on page one for customers searching nearby. When your business is not commercial.  There are different domain extensions for different business types.  For example, if you’re cannabis business is a non-profit, you may want to use a “.org” domain.  When someone else in a completely different industry owns it.  This is not ideal.   However, the goal is to not lose business to another company.  Therefore, if someone owns YourBrand.com and they sell auto parts, you should be okay going with the “.co” or “.us”.  Another factor in doing this, and the reason this should be your last option is competing with Google Rankings.  By this, I mean you’ll now be competing for your brand name as a keyword on Google which can be a significant amount of traffic once you’re an established brand.  Search the brand name and check the “.com” company’s listings to see what you’ll be up against to get to the first page for people searching your brand name.  If it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to outperform their existing domain and page authority scores for the listings showing up on page 1, you should choose another brand name all together.  Exhaust all other domain possibilities before going this route.