I am occasionally asked whether I would recommend a domain with special characters like æøå. I think the idea behind it is great, but the internet wasn’t created for strange characters like the ones we have in the Nordic languages and also in some other languages. Therefore, it’s not always preferable in practice. You should carefully consider what the domain will be used for and how widespread it needs to be.
Let’s start with an advantage! If you have to present your company and website over the phone, and the company’s name contains a special character, it’s just easier to use the actual name the company has. If you’ve changed an ø to oe, you have to remember to say it over the phone. However, that’s the only advantage I personally can see in having a domain with special characters.
Now, let’s look at the negatives. Many systems are not designed to handle our special characters. You can usually work around many obstacles, but it’s often a bit cumbersome. Some email clients, for example, don’t understand these characters and can’t “translate” them into ASCII characters, which is necessary for your domain to load correctly. Our own cPanel system doesn’t understand special characters either, but it can be managed with the aforementioned ASCII characters. It’s not critical, but your domain path in ASCII characters doesn’t look very nice. We’ve had reactions like “My domain definitely shouldn’t be named that” when customers saw their ASCII character domain name.
So, when is it practical to have a domain with special characters? In my opinion, it’s practical if you ensure to buy the domain with both special characters and without special characters. For example, a domain that is københavn.dk should also be purchased as koebenhavn.dk. That way, you can simply present your web address over the phone or in business conversations without having to explain the issue with the special character. Here, you just set up a redirect from the domain with special characters to the domain without special characters. You can create an email like info@koebenhavn.com, which works fine.
This is a personal opinion and should not be seen as a definitive answer, as others might see different advantages in it. This article is just meant to make you aware of the issues to consider before buying a domain.
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