.blog Domain
Your Words Deserve a .blog
Register your .blog domain from just £25.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .blog domain?
The .blog domain is purpose-built for writers, commentators, and content creators. It tells visitors they're arriving at a regularly updated publication rather than a static website.
Who should register .blog?
Bloggers, content creators, journalists, and anyone publishing regular written content.
Why choose .blog?
- Clearly signals fresh content
- Works for any blog topic
- Clean and professional
- Recognised worldwide
Who runs .blog, and since when
Registry data from the .blog 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
- Knock Knock WHOIS There, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2016
- Delegated 12 May 2016
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no requirement to publish a blog
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £25.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why the company behind WordPress owns .blog
The odd thing about .blog is who owns it. The sponsoring organisation on the IANA record is Knock Knock WHOIS There, LLC, registered at a San Francisco address, and behind that name is Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com and employs a large share of the people who work on WordPress itself. Automattic won the rights at auction in 2015 and the extension was delegated on 12 May 2016. Day-to-day technical operation now sits with Fury Registry Services, run by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority.
None of that obliges you to run WordPress. A .blog is an ordinary generic extension: it resolves like any other, it works on any host and any platform, and the registry never asks what software you use or whether you publish anything at all. The ownership is worth knowing because it explains why the extension exists and why it has been looked after, not because it ties your site to anything.
What the extension commits you to
.blog is one of the few extensions that describes the site rather than the owner. That is the appeal: yourname.blog needs no explanation, survives being read out, and tells a first-time visitor what they are about to get. It is also the catch. The address states what the site is, so if the site changes, the address starts arguing with it. A writer who turns a following into a consultancy ends up sending invoices from an address that says "blog", and moving off it later costs redirects, inbound links and a fair amount of explaining to people who bookmarked the old one.
Where we would push back hardest is on the business case. If you run a company and want somewhere to publish, a subfolder on your existing domain is usually the better answer. One address collects all the links, the writing helps the pages that take the money, and there is no second renewal to remember. Splitting the blog onto its own extension divides that effort across two names. A .blog earns its keep when the publication is the thing itself rather than a marketing channel for something else.
Our steer: for a personal publication that intends to stay one, .blog is a clean and memorable buy at around two and a half times the annual price of a .co.uk. For a business, keep the writing on the domain that takes the payments.
Is .blog the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.blog works well if
- The publication is the brand. For a writer, a critic or a newsletter, yourname.blog says what the site is in the address bar and needs no tagline.
- Your name has gone on .com and .co.uk, and .blog is a better answer than adding a hyphen or a word nobody will remember.
- You are moving off a free subdomain on somebody else's platform and want an address you can carry to any host later.
- You want writing that is yours kept apart from an employer, a client or a platform that could change its mind about what it hosts.
Look elsewhere if
- You are a business that also publishes. A blog in a subfolder of your main domain keeps every link on one address and usually does more for search than a second domain does.
- The address will appear on quotes, invoices and contracts. .blog reads as personal publishing, which is right for a blog and wrong on paperwork.
- Your customers are local and search from the UK. A .blog carries no UK signal, and a .co.uk costs well under half as much each year.
- There is a decent chance the site becomes something else. Changing domain later means redirects, lost link value and re-teaching an audience where to find you.
Running a business that also publishes? Keep everything on one .co.uk and put the blog in a subfolder. See .co.uk pricing.
.blog vs .co.uk: which should you register?
One of these describes the content and the other describes the country, so the choice comes down to which fact about you is more useful to a stranger reading the address.
Pick .co.uk if anything about the site is commercial, if you want to be found by people searching from Britain, or if you want free WHOIS privacy as a UK individual under Nominet's rules. It is also the cheaper renewal by a wide margin, and it never stops being accurate. Pick .blog when the site is a publication first and the extension is doing useful work in the name itself, particularly when the .co.uk version of the name has gone.
The pairing we recommend most often is neither exotic nor expensive: hold the .co.uk, publish on it, and register the .blog as well if the name matters to you. Point one at the other and you keep the option open without splitting your audience across two addresses.
| .blog | .co.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Generic, delegated 2016 | Country-code for the United Kingdom |
| What the address says | This is a publication | This is a UK business |
| UK search signal | None | Yes, Google reads it as UK |
| WHOIS privacy | Paid add-on | Free for UK individuals |
| Transfer time | Usually a few days | Near instant IPS tag change |
| Annual cost | About two and a half times a .co.uk | Lower |
.blog domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .blog domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. The registry belongs to Automattic, which makes WordPress.com, but a .blog domain has no technical connection to any platform. It works on WordPress, on a static site generator, on Ghost, on a hand-written HTML page or on nothing at all if you just want to hold the name. Point the DNS wherever you like. We host WordPress and plenty of other things, and a .blog behaves identically to a .com on all of them.
Usually not, if you already have a domain. Publishing at yourdomain.co.uk/blog/ keeps every link and every mention working for one address, and the articles help the pages that sell. A separate .blog starts from nothing and builds authority in parallel, which means twice the work for the same audience. A .blog makes sense when the publication is the whole business, or when you have no other domain that the writing belongs on.
Automattic, through a subsidiary called Knock Knock WHOIS There, LLC, which is the sponsoring organisation named in the IANA root zone database. Automattic acquired the rights at auction in 2015 and the extension was delegated on 12 May 2016. The technical contact on the current IANA record is Fury Registry Services, operated by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, so the day-to-day running of the namespace is contracted out.
Yes. There are no eligibility rules, no local presence requirement and nothing to verify. The registry does not check that you publish a blog, or that you publish anything, so a .blog can sit as a redirect or a placeholder for as long as you keep paying for it. Practically speaking, though, the extension makes a promise to visitors. An address ending .blog that leads to a sales page is a small disappointment you have engineered for yourself.
Around two and a half times as much each year, and the gap does not close on renewal. Check the figures on this page before deciding, then multiply by however long you expect to be publishing, because a domain is a recurring bill rather than a purchase. If the name is the reason you want it, that premium is defensible. If you are buying the extension because it looks tidy, the .co.uk does the same job for less.
It renews until you stop paying, and then it goes. Once a lapsed domain is released, anyone can register it, and every link, bookmark and search result pointing at your old articles then points at whatever the new owner publishes. If you wind a blog down, the tidy exit is to redirect it to wherever your writing now lives and keep renewing it for a couple of years while the old links die off naturally. Dropping it the moment you stop posting is the version people regret.
Included with Your .blog 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.
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Register your .blog domain today
Secure your .blog domain from just £25.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
