.biz Domain
A Domain Built for Business
Register your .biz domain from just £20.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone may register a .biz, but the name must be used, or intended to be used, primarily for bona fide business or commercial purposes. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .biz domain?
The .biz extension was created specifically for business use. It's a direct, no-nonsense domain that tells visitors exactly what to expect. If your primary .com is taken, .biz offers a clear commercial alternative with strong business connotations.
Who should register .biz?
Small businesses, entrepreneurs, and commercial ventures seeking a business-focused domain.
Why choose .biz?
- Purpose-built for commerce
- Clear business signal
- Good .com alternative
- Affordable business branding
Who runs .biz, and since when
Registry data from the .biz 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
- Restricted generic
- Registry operator
- Registry Services, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2001
- Delegated 26 June 2001
- Who can register
- Open to anyone, but use must be primarily business or commercial under registry rules
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £20.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
The .biz business-use rule and who enforces it
Start with the label IANA puts on it. In the root zone database .biz is not listed as a plain generic extension. It is a restricted generic top-level domain, and that classification points at a rule almost nobody who buys one has read. A .biz is supposed to be used, or intended to be used, primarily for bona fide business or commercial purposes. The registry does not check this when you order. A third party can challenge it afterwards, and the panel hearing the challenge can cancel the domain or hand the registration to whoever complained.
The rule made sense where it came from. In November 2000 ICANN selected seven new strings, the first expansion of the domain name system beyond country codes since the 1980s, and .biz was the one pointed squarely at commerce. It entered the root zone on 26 June 2001. Neustar ran it for its first two decades; IANA records the transfer to Registry Services, LLC, GoDaddy's registry business, in October 2020, which is where it sits now alongside .club.
What the business-use rule means in practice
For an ordinary trading business, very little. If you sell something, or are setting up to sell something, you are inside the definition without doing anything at all. It bites in two narrow places, both named in the policy: a site used exclusively for personal, non-commercial purposes, and a name registered solely to sell or lease on at a profit. The realistic chance of a complaint is small. It is not nil, and it is the kind of clause that only matters on the day it matters.
The current registry also publishes something most extensions do not: a .biz Rapid Domain Name Compliance Process, dated 1 January 2022, letting it lock, hold, transfer or delete a name used for phishing, pharming, malware, fast flux hosting, botnets or spam. Read that as the operator taking abuse seriously rather than as a threat hanging over a normal small business.
Which leaves the commercial question. The .biz extension exists because in 2001 the .com you wanted had already gone. That problem has not gone away, but the answers have multiplied, and .biz has not aged as well as its 2001 pitch suggested it would. Compare the figure on this page against the .com and the .co.uk before you decide, and picture the address on a van, on an invoice and read out on a voicemail. Where the .com has gone, changing the word on the left of the dot usually beats changing the extension on the right.
Who is allowed to register .biz?
Anyone may register a .biz, but the name must be used, or intended to be used, primarily for bona fide business or commercial purposes.
- What counts as business use
- The policy defines it as using the name, or intending to use it, to exchange goods, services, information or property of any kind, or in the ordinary course of trade or business. Selling anything, or setting up to sell anything, puts you inside the definition without any paperwork.
- What does not count
- A domain used exclusively for personal, non-commercial purposes is named in the policy as an example of use that is not bona fide, as is a site existing only to express non-commercial opinions. Registering a name solely to sell, trade or lease it on for compensation is excluded too.
- Nobody checks at the point of sale
- The registry does not review, monitor or verify what any .biz is used for, so no order gets refused on these grounds and no documents are requested. The obligation sits in your registration agreement with the registrar and is enforced after the fact, by third parties rather than by the registry.
- If a complaint succeeds
- A challenge runs as an administrative proceeding under the Restrictions Dispute Resolution Policy, with the complainant carrying the burden of proof and paying the fees. The only remedies available are cancellation of your domain or transfer of the registration to the complainant. A complaint based purely on the domain being unused is not valid.
Rules taken from the ICANN Restrictions Dispute Resolution Policy for .biz. Registry policy can change, so check before you buy if the answer matters to you.
Not sure whether you qualify? Ask us before you order and we will check the registry rules with you. We would rather answer the question than take an order the registry will refuse.
Is .biz the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.biz works well if
- You are a trading business and the .biz version of your name is short and clean while the .com is a three-word compromise.
- Your customers are other businesses in the United States, where .biz has more history and reads less oddly than it does here.
- You want a defensive registration so nobody else can trade on your name under this extension, and you will redirect it at your main site.
- The business-use rule is a non-issue for you because you sell something, which is the whole test.
Look elsewhere if
- You want the cheap option. Check the price on this page against the .com and the .co.uk first, because .biz is no longer the discount choice its launch implied.
- The site will be personal, a hobby or a portfolio with nothing for sale. That use sits outside the published restriction and is the one case where a complaint could succeed.
- Your customers are British consumers searching locally. A .co.uk carries a UK signal in Google that .biz cannot, and it costs less.
- You are worried about looking dated. The extension is closely tied to the era that produced it and reads that way to a lot of people.
Selling to UK customers? A .co.uk costs less, transfers in free and instantly, and tells Google where you trade. See .co.uk pricing.
.biz vs .com: which should you register?
This is the comparison .biz was built for. It launched in 2001 as the answer to a .com shortage, and for a while that was a fair pitch: the good .com names had gone and there was almost nowhere else to go. Hundreds of extensions later, being the alternative to .com is not a position anyone holds on their own.
Where .com wins: it is what people type without thinking, it has no use restriction attached to it, and its wholesale price is capped by contract, which no other extension in this batch can say. Where .biz can win: availability at a shorter length, and a US business audience that reads it more naturally than a British one does.
If both are free, take the .com. If the .com is gone, our honest advice is to try a different word on the left before you settle for a different extension on the right, then compare what is left against a .co.uk. A .biz is a reasonable defensive registration and a harder sell as the address you build a brand on.
| .biz | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Restricted generic | Generic |
| In the root since | 2001 | 1985 |
| Registry | Registry Services, LLC | VeriSign Global Registry Services |
| Use restriction | Business or commercial use | None |
| Wholesale price cap | None in the contract | Capped, rises in four years of six |
| Typed by default | Rarely | Almost always |
.biz domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .biz domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes, and no documents are asked for. There is no residency test, no company registration to prove and no verification step, so the order goes through the same way any other extension does. The catch is what you agree to when it does. Your registration agreement carries the .biz registration restrictions, which require the name to be used primarily for business or commercial purposes. Nothing is checked up front, and the rule is enforced only when somebody complains.
You are outside the published restriction, and in principle someone could bring a complaint. The policy names a site used exclusively for personal, non-commercial purposes as an example of use that is not bona fide business use, and a successful complaint gets your domain cancelled or transferred to the complainant. In practice complaints of this kind are rare, because the person bringing one pays the fees and has to prove the point. If the site is personal, a .co.uk or a .uk is a better fit anyway.
Not on our price list, and that surprises people who remember the launch. The .biz extension was introduced as the pressure valve for a crowded .com, but pricing has moved a long way since 2001 and it now sits above .com and well above .co.uk. Compare all three figures before you commit, and remember the difference is annual and permanent rather than a one-off. Buying .biz on the assumption it is the budget option is the single most common mistake here.
It is neutral rather than bad. Google gives no ranking advantage or penalty for the extension itself, and treats .biz the same way it treats .com and .org. The real difference is what a .biz does not do: it carries no country signal, so it will not get the lift in Google UK results that a .co.uk gets from being a British extension. If most of your customers search from the UK, that missing signal is a fair argument against it, and it has nothing to do with the extension being penalised.
Registry Services, LLC, the registry business owned by GoDaddy. IANA recorded the transfer from Neustar, which had operated the extension since its launch, in October 2020. The same operator runs .club, so two of the extensions on this site sit behind one registry. It publishes a .biz specific compliance process dated 1 January 2022 covering phishing, malware, botnets, fast flux and spam, under which it can lock, hold, transfer or delete an abusive name.
Yes. Unlock it at your current registrar, request the authorisation code, and start the transfer here. It normally settles within a few days rather than the near-instant IPS tag change a .uk domain gets, because every generic extension runs through the ICANN transfer process. Your remaining registration time carries over and a year is added on completion. A domain cannot be transferred inside its first sixty days, and a recent change of registrant can lock it for sixty days too.
Included with Your .biz 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 .biz domain today
Secure your .biz domain from just £20.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
