.agency Domain
The Address That Means Business
Register your .agency domain from just £27.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .agency domain?
The .agency domain is tailor-made for service-oriented businesses that work on behalf of clients. It immediately communicates that your organisation provides expert services, whether in marketing, recruitment, design, or travel.
Who should register .agency?
Creative agencies, marketing firms, recruitment agencies, and travel agencies.
Why choose .agency?
- Defines your business model instantly
- Professional service branding
- Broad agency sector coverage
- Memorable client-facing address
Who runs .agency, and since when
Registry data from the .agency delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- Binky Moon, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 9 January 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no agency credentials or documents required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £27.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What a .agency domain signals, and what it cannot
The .agency domain arrived in 2014 in the first wave of the new generic top-level domain programme, part of a large portfolio applied for by Donuts and held today by Binky Moon, LLC, the registry arm of Identity Digital. Nobody checks whether you run an agency. There is no accreditation to hold, no Companies House number to supply, no trade body to join. The word on the right of the dot is a description you have chosen, not a claim anyone has verified.
In British usage that word covers a lot of ground. Creative and digital shops use it. So do PR firms, media buyers, recruitment and employment agencies, estate agencies, talent agents and, a little awkwardly, government bodies. Breadth is what makes the extension useful and what makes it slippery. brandname.agency reads as a sentence and needs no explaining. brandnameagency.agency says the same word twice and reads like a placeholder somebody forgot to replace.
What .agency does for SEO, and what it does not
The keyword in the extension buys you nothing in search results. Google has said so in writing, and the statement below is worth reading before you spend the difference between this and a .co.uk on the assumption it will help you rank for the word "agency". What moves rankings on that term is what it has always been: pages that answer the query and other sites linking to them. A .agency address does help a human work out what you do in the second before your page loads. That is worth something to a reader. It is worth nothing to an algorithm.
Two practical points before you order. The first is cost. This is one of the dearer extensions we sell, and the gap against a .co.uk repeats every year for as long as the business exists. The second is price certainty, which almost nobody thinks about. Verisign runs .com under a contract that caps its wholesale price and allows rises in only four years out of every six. The base contract that .agency and every other 2014-era extension runs under has no cap in it at all. The registry needs to give thirty days' notice to raise the price of a new registration and a hundred and eighty days for renewals, and that is the whole of the protection. It argues for buying several years at once rather than one at a time.
Our steer: take the .agency when your brand name sits naturally in front of it, and hold the .co.uk alongside pointing at the same site. If you are picking between the two purely on money, pick the .co.uk.
Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
What that means if you are buying one
That answer has stood for over a decade and nothing since has softened it. Price a .agency as a branding decision and judge it the way you would judge a logo: does it make the business clearer to a client reading it on an invoice? Where the answer is no, the money does more good on the .co.uk and a second year of hosting.
Is .agency the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.agency works well if
- Your brand name reads as a phrase in front of the word, so the address explains the business before anyone opens it. Studio names and surnames work particularly well.
- You already hold the .co.uk and want a shorter, cleaner address for campaign sites, pitch decks and email signatures.
- Every sensible .com and .co.uk for your name has gone, and you would rather have a clean brand than a hyphen or a bolted-on extra word.
- You sell services to other businesses, where buyers see unusual extensions daily and will not assume you have mistyped your own address.
Look elsewhere if
- You are choosing on price. This is one of the dearer extensions on our list, and that gap against a .co.uk lands again at every renewal.
- Most of your enquiries come from people searching locally in the UK. A .co.uk gives Google a country signal that .agency cannot.
- You read your address out to non-technical customers. Expect to spell it every time, and expect a share of them to type .com anyway.
- The word is doing the work your brand should be doing. If the name only makes sense with "agency" attached, that is a naming problem rather than a domain problem.
If the .com for your brand is still free, take that first. A .agency is the answer when it has gone, not a reason to skip it. See .com pricing.
.agency vs .co.uk: which should you register?
Most UK agencies end up holding both, so the real question is which one the website answers on and which one redirects. That decision is easier than it looks, because the two extensions are good at opposite things.
The .co.uk earns its place through search and cost. Google treats a UK country-code extension as evidence a site is aimed at Britain, which matters if your enquiries come from people typing "design agency" plus a town name. It is also one of the cheapest extensions we sell, and a transfer in is free and near instant because .uk transfers are an IPS tag change rather than a queue.
The .agency earns its place through clarity. It says what you are in the address itself, it is often available at a length the .co.uk is not, and it looks deliberate on a business card. Our usual recommendation for a UK agency is to run the site on the .co.uk, hold the .agency, and point it at the same place. Reverse that only if you sell abroad more than you sell at home.
| .agency | .co.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Generic, open worldwide | UK country-code, second level |
| Registry | Binky Moon, LLC | Nominet UK |
| Geographic signal | None | United Kingdom |
| What it says | The sector you work in | Where you trade |
| Annual cost | Among the dearer we sell | Among the cheapest |
| Transfer in | Days, with an auth code | Near instant, free, via IPS tag |
.agency domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .agency domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. The .agency registry sets no eligibility test at all. There is no accreditation to prove, no company number to supply and no sector you have to work in, and the ICANN registry agreement for the extension carries no restriction specification. A sole trader, a limited company, a charity or an individual outside the UK can all register one on the same terms. What the registry does reserve is the right to suspend a name used for phishing, malware or other abuse, which is standard across every extension we sell.
No. Google has stated in writing that keywords in a top-level domain give no advantage or disadvantage in search, and that new extensions are treated the same as .com and .org. The extension will not lift you for "creative agency" or "recruitment agency". What it does do is tell a person reading your address what you are, before they click. Treat that as a branding gain and plan your search visibility around content and links, exactly as you would on any other extension.
Only if you will actually use it. A second domain that redirects and never appears on anything is a recurring bill for no return, and at this extension's price the bill is not trivial. It earns its keep when it becomes the address you print, say and sign off with, or when you want a clean home for a campaign. If the .co.uk is already on your vans and your invoices, changing the address people know is a cost in itself.
The registry charges more, and nothing stops it. Verisign runs .com under an ICANN contract that caps its wholesale price and permits an increase in only four years out of every six. The base contract covering .agency has no cap: the registry sets its own price and need only give thirty days' notice on new registrations and a hundred and eighty days on renewals. That is why the sensible move on any 2014-era extension is to register for several years at once rather than renewing annually.
Some will, and the split runs along how technical your audience is. Buyers at other businesses see these extensions constantly and think nothing of it. Consumers, older customers and anyone taking your details down over the phone are a different matter, and you will spend a lot of your life saying "dot agency, not dot com". If a meaningful share of your work arrives by telephone, that friction is a real cost and the .co.uk avoids it.
Yes. Unlock the domain at your current registrar, get the authorisation code, and start the transfer with us. Expect a few days rather than the near-instant IPS tag change a .uk gets. Your remaining registration period carries over and the transfer adds a year on top, so nothing is lost. Two ICANN rules to watch: a domain cannot transfer in its first sixty days, and changing the registrant contact can trigger a further sixty-day lock.
Included with Your .agency Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other Business Domains Extensions
Register your .agency domain today
Secure your .agency domain from just £27.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
