.boutique Domain
A Domain as Unique as Your Boutique
Register your .boutique domain from just £29.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .boutique domain?
The .boutique domain is tailored for independent retailers and niche shops that offer something special. It conveys exclusivity and a curated shopping experience that sets you apart from mass-market competitors.
Who should register .boutique?
Independent fashion boutiques, niche retailers, and curated gift shops.
Why choose .boutique?
- Conveys exclusivity and style
- Differentiates from big retailers
- Appeals to discerning shoppers
- Perfect for niche brands
Who runs .boutique, and since when
Registry data from the .boutique 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 16 January 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no retail test and no requirement to sell clothing
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £29.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What .boutique means now, beyond clothes shops
The word stopped meaning a small clothes shop a long time ago. There are boutique hotels, boutique agencies, boutique gyms, boutique law firms and boutique breweries, and every one of them is borrowing the same idea: small, chosen, not mass market. Anybody registering a .boutique domain today is buying that idea rather than a retail category.
Which is useful and vague at once. The extension positions you but tells nobody what you sell, so the label in front of the dot has to carry all the meaning. Rowanhill.boutique says nothing at all about stock. Rowanhillceramics.boutique says plenty and is starting to get long.
Length is the practical objection. Eight letters after the dot, typed on a phone, by somebody who half remembers your name from a market stall. It is also a French loanword, so people write botique and boutiqe, and you will spell it out every single time you give the address over the telephone. Try it on a friend who has never seen your branding before you commit to print.
Binky Moon, LLC operates the extension through Identity Digital and it entered the root zone on 16 January 2014. Anyone may register one. There is no retail test, no requirement to hold stock and no obligation to sell clothing, so a consultancy or a gin distillery can take one as readily as a dress shop. At £29.99 a year it is roughly three times a .co.uk, and that gap repeats annually rather than once.
It fits best where the brand is the product and the customer already knows your name before they type anything, arriving from Instagram, a magazine feature, a market or word of mouth. Where they arrive by searching for what you sell, the .co.uk is doing more work for less money.
Is .boutique the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.boutique works well if
- Your customers already know your name and come looking for it, from social media, press coverage, a stall or personal recommendation.
- Small and curated is the actual positioning, so the extension states the thing you would otherwise put in a strapline.
- You are a boutique hotel, agency, gym, studio or brewery, where the word has drifted well past retail and still fits.
- The .co.uk and .com of your brand name are held by unrelated businesses and you would rather not add a filler word.
Look elsewhere if
- You give the address out on the phone regularly. A French loanword invites botique and boutiqe, and you will spell it every time.
- Most enquiries begin with somebody searching for the product rather than the brand, where a .co.uk carries a UK signal this cannot.
- It is eight characters after the dot, on top of your name, on an audience that mostly types with a thumb.
Customers finding you by searching for what you sell rather than who you are? Put the money into the .co.uk. See .co.uk pricing.
.boutique vs .store: which should you register?
These two make opposite arguments about the same business. A .store says here is a shop, plainly, in five letters that everybody can spell. A .boutique says here is a small shop worth choosing, in eight letters that some people cannot.
Pick .boutique when curation is the selling point and the customer is buying your taste as much as the product. Pick .store when you want the shortest, clearest possible signal that this address sells things, and when the brand rather than the positioning is doing the persuading. The pricing is the surprise: .store costs noticeably more per year here than .boutique does, so length is not buying you savings in either direction.
Both are generic extensions with no country signal attached, so neither helps a UK shop in UK search the way a .co.uk does. If local trade matters, that is the one to own first and either of these can point at it.
| .boutique | .store | |
|---|---|---|
| Characters after the dot | Eight | Five |
| What it claims | Small and curated | A shop |
| Spelling risk | Real, it is French | Almost none |
| Annual cost here | Around £30 | Around £50 |
| UK search signal | None | None |
.boutique domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .boutique domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. There is no retail test, no product category rule and no requirement to hold stock at all. The registry publishes no eligibility policy for this extension, so a marketing agency, a hotel, a gym or a gin distillery can register one exactly as easily as a dress shop. That reflects how the word is used now, which is much broader than clothing, and it is worth remembering that your customers read it that way too.
It is the longest ending in this group at eight characters, and that is a real cost on a phone keyboard and in print. The way to judge it is total length: a five-letter brand plus .boutique is shorter and better than a long descriptive name on a .co.uk. A three-word name plus .boutique is not. Write the whole address out at the size it will appear on a card before you decide.
Some will. Botique and boutiqe are the two common ones, and you will hear them the first time you read the address to somebody over the phone. It is not fatal, and you can register the obvious misspelling on a cheaper extension and redirect it, but it does mean this is a poor choice for a business whose enquiries arrive by telephone or by word of mouth in a noisy room.
It depends on which half of your proposition matters more, and that is a question about your customers rather than about domains. .shop is shorter, blunter and unmistakable about what the site does. .boutique adds a claim about how you do it and costs a couple of pounds less a year here. Neither carries any UK search signal, so if local trade is where the money is, register the .co.uk first and let the other one point at it.
Included with Your .boutique 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 E-Commerce Domains Extensions
Register your .boutique domain today
Secure your .boutique domain from just £29.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
