Namespaces
A namespace is the identifier itself — the thing after the asterisk.
What a valid name looks like
Lowercase letters, digits and hyphens. Two to thirty characters. No leading or trailing hyphen, no consecutive hyphens.
The * is branding, not part of the name. *hotel and hotel are the same identifier: the
asterisk is how you write it on a poster, appsterisk.me/hotel is how a browser reaches it. No
browser resolves *hotel on its own, and Appsterisk does not pretend otherwise.
Accents and other scripts
Accents fold: *josé and *jose are the same name, with one owner. If they were separate, the
accented spelling would be a ready-made impersonation of the plain one.
Non-Latin scripts are refused. Cyrillic а, Greek ο and full-width ａ look identical to Latin
letters in most typefaces — allowing them would mean *аpple and *apple could belong to different
people with no way for a reader to tell which is which.
The four kinds of name
| Free | Formats useless to a squatter — a personal name with a numeric suffix, a business qualified by place. Three per account. |
| Standard | Everything else. Fixed price, instant purchase. |
| Premium | Short, generic, high-intent words — *hotel, *pizza, *news. Higher fixed price. |
| Reserved | Not for sale. Either a system identifier (admin, api, login) or a name held back for a brand. |
Searching a reserved name tells you only: this name is reserved, contact us to claim it. No price, no reason — the difference between a routing identifier and a protected brand is not a searcher's business.
Buying a name
Search, see the price, pay. The name is held for 30 minutes while you complete checkout, and returns to the market if you do not.
Two people buying the same name at the same moment is a case the system handles rather than avoids: exactly one succeeds, decided by the write and never by the search that preceded it. The other is told the name is unavailable before any card is charged.
Free names
Free identifiers exist so you can start without a purchase, in formats that are worthless to someone hoarding names:
*thiago-junqueira-8472
*mybusiness-goiania
Short, generic and commercially valuable words are never free.
:::note Not yet built Free names are decided policy and are not implemented. Every name today is standard, premium or reserved. :::