.business Domain
Say What You Are in the URL
Register your .business domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .business domain?
The .business domain is the full-word alternative to .biz. It's longer, but that length carries formality and seriousness. Companies House registrations, business directories, and B2B service providers find .business a solid choice when .com is taken and .biz feels too casual. It works across sectors because every company is, at its core, a business.
Who should register .business?
B2B service providers, business directories, startup incubators, and companies wanting a formal alternative to .biz.
Why choose .business?
- More formal than .biz
- Universal across all sectors
- Professional and serious tone
- Strong alternative when .com is taken
Who runs .business, and since when
Registry data from the .business 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 18 August 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no eligibility checks and no local presence rule
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £19.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why .business is open where .biz is restricted
IANA classifies .biz as a restricted generic top-level domain. It classifies .business as a plain generic one. That single line in the root zone database is the most useful thing a buyer can know about the pair, because it says the older, shorter extension carries conditions on how it may be used and the longer full-word one does not. Anyone can register a .business, for any purpose, anywhere, with nothing to prove and nobody to satisfy.
The extension arrived in August 2014, near the end of the first wave of new gTLDs, and sits in the portfolio Identity Digital runs through its Binky Moon subsidiary. That portfolio matters more than it sounds. In March 2018 nearly two hundred extensions that had each been held by a separate single-purpose company were folded into Binky Moon in one transfer, so .business now shares its policies, its abuse handling and its reserved-name practice with .center, .directory, .events and the rest of that group.
The practical reading is that .business works hardest when the word is doing real work in the name. A trade body, a B2B service, a listing of local firms. It works least well bolted onto a name that already says what the company is, because then you are paying an annual fee for a word your visitor had already worked out.
One thing to plan for. Short, obvious single-word names in this extension are the ones a registry is most likely to hold back as premium, and Identity Digital reserves names for exactly that. Ask us to check the registration price and the renewal price on the specific name you want, because the two are not always the same figure.
Is .business the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.business works well if
- The word is doing real work in the name: a trade body, a B2B service or a directory of local firms where the extension completes the phrase.
- Both the .com and the .co.uk for your name are held by unrelated firms, and you would rather have a clean readable address than a hyphenated compromise.
- You want something that reads more formally than .biz without paying for a sponsored or verified extension.
- You sell to other businesses rather than to consumers, so the extension reads as a category signal rather than as a novelty.
Look elsewhere if
- Your customers are UK consumers who search locally. A .co.uk carries a UK signal in Google that .business cannot, and costs less every year.
- Your company name already ends in a word like Services, Solutions or Group. Adding .business repeats the idea and lengthens the address for nothing.
- People need to reach you after hearing the address once. Eight extra characters is a lot to spell out on a call, and some will try .biz or .com instead.
Selling to UK consumers rather than to other businesses? A .co.uk does more for local search and costs less every year. See .co.uk pricing.
.business vs .biz: which should you register?
These two chase the same buyer, and the honest difference is not tone, it is classification. IANA records .biz as a restricted generic top-level domain and .business as an ordinary generic one. Both are easy to buy in practice, but only one of them has usage conditions attached to it in the root zone record.
.biz is shorter and older, delegated back in June 2001, and it carries two decades of association with cheap early-2000s web hosting that some readers still hear when they see it. .business is longer, reads more formally on an invoice or a business card, and at our current prices it is the cheaper of the two.
If your name is short, .biz stays typeable. If your name is already long, adding eight more characters is a real cost, and at that point neither extension is beating a well-chosen .co.uk.
| .business | .biz | |
|---|---|---|
| IANA classification | Generic top-level domain | Restricted generic top-level domain |
| In the root zone since | 2014 | 2001 |
| Registry operator | Binky Moon, LLC | Registry Services, LLC |
| Length | Nine characters with the dot | Four characters with the dot |
| Tone | Formal, full word | Short, dated by association |
.business domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .business domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyBetter is the wrong test, because they aim at the same buyer and neither carries a ranking advantage. The difference worth knowing is that IANA records .biz as a restricted generic top-level domain and .business as an ordinary generic one. .business also reads more formally and is currently the cheaper of the two at our prices. .biz is four characters shorter, which matters if your company name is already long.
No. Google gives no ranking boost to the new generic extensions, and it does not read .business as a keyword match for searches containing the word business. What does carry a signal is a country-code extension: Google reads a .co.uk as a UK site, which can help in Google UK results. If local search is where your customers come from, that is the more useful buy.
Yes. You will need the authorisation code from your current registrar, the domain unlocked, and at least 60 days since it was registered or last transferred. A .business transfer usually completes in a few days rather than the near-instant IPS tag change a .uk domain gets, so start it well before your renewal date rather than after it. Your remaining registration period carries over and the transfer adds a year on top.
Included with Your .business 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 .business domain today
Secure your .business domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
