.cloud Domain
Take Your Business Above the Rest
Register your .cloud domain from just £24.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .cloud domain?
The .cloud domain has become synonymous with modern technology infrastructure. It's the go-to address for cloud computing platforms, SaaS products, and businesses that deliver services through the cloud.
Who should register .cloud?
Cloud computing providers, SaaS companies, IT infrastructure firms, and cloud storage services.
Why choose .cloud?
- Synonymous with modern tech
- Signals innovation and scale
- Ideal for SaaS products
- Recognised across the tech industry
Who runs .cloud, and since when
Registry data from the .cloud 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
- ARUBA PEC S.p.A.
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2015
- Delegated 18 June 2015
- Who can register
- Open to anyone, with no eligibility rules outside the original trademark sunrise
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £24.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What .cloud signals, and the sub-domain clause to check
Put .cloud after a product name and the address does one job: it tells a reader that the thing behind it is a service you connect to rather than software you install on a machine. That is a narrower promise than it looks. It sits comfortably on a storage platform, a monitoring tool or a managed backup product, and awkwardly on a plumbing firm in Kettering.
The registry is Aruba PEC S.p.A., which is worth a sentence because Aruba is one of Italy's largest hosting companies. The extension is run by a business that sells hosting rather than by a pure registry operator. It signed its agreement with ICANN on 16 April 2015 and .cloud entered the root zone that June, near the end of the wave of new generic extensions. Registration is open: the registry's own policies state that outside the original trademark sunrise there are no eligibility restrictions or prerequisites on who may apply. Names run from one to ten years, and a set of premium names is held back and released by auction or by proposal rather than first come, first served.
The clause about sub-domains
Anyone building a multi-tenant product should read section 31 of those policies before ordering. It says sub-domains are not permitted for commercial or non-commercial use without the express permission of the registry operator, and that you must not register a name for the purpose of creating a sub-registry. Read strictly that is broad wording, and its clear target is people handing out names beneath a domain to third parties rather than anyone running an ordinary www or app host. But if the product plan is customer1.yourapp.cloud, customer2.yourapp.cloud and so on, that sits closer to the behaviour the clause describes than most founders assume. Ask the registry in writing first. It costs an email, and it beats finding out after the sign-up flow is built.
Our steer is simple. Buy .cloud when the word is doing real work in the name. If you would have to explain why an accountancy practice is on a .cloud, the extension is decoration, and a .co.uk will serve the business better for far less every year. Where it does fit, register the matching .com or .co.uk alongside it and point one at the other, because "dot cloud" said down a telephone line still gets typed as ".com" by a fair number of people.
Sub-domains are not permitted for commercial or non-commercial use, without the express permission of the Registry Operator. You must not register a domain name for the purpose of creating a sub-registry, without the express permission of the Registry Operator.
What that means if you are buying one
Most extensions say nothing at all about sub-domains, so this one is worth a minute. It does not stop you running mail.yourbrand.cloud or app.yourbrand.cloud for yourself. It is pointed at allocating names to other people. If that is the business model rather than a detail, get the permission in writing before you build anything on top of it.
Is .cloud the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.cloud works well if
- You are naming a service customers connect to rather than software they download, and you want the address to say so before the page has loaded.
- The name you want has gone on .com and .co.uk, and putting the category word after the dot reads better than bolting "app", "hq" or "get" onto the front.
- Your buyers are IT and technical purchasers who read the extension as a category label rather than as an oddity.
- You sell the same product in several countries, so a UK-specific extension would narrow the address for no gain.
Look elsewhere if
- You sell locally to UK consumers. Google treats a country-code extension as a strong signal of who a site is for, and a generic one carries no such signal at all.
- Your product depends on giving every customer their own sub-domain. The registry policy restricts sub-registry use without written permission, so check before you build.
- You read your address aloud often. "Dot cloud" gets heard as ".com" often enough to show up as mistyped traffic you have already paid to earn.
- Budget matters and this is a permanent annual bill, well above a .co.uk and payable again every year for as long as the business trades.
Selling to UK customers rather than to the technology industry? A .co.uk does more for local search and costs far less each year. See .co.uk pricing.
.cloud vs .io: which should you register?
These are the two extensions technology companies most often shortlist against each other, and they say different things. A .io reads as something built by developers, for developers. A .cloud reads as infrastructure that somebody operates on your behalf. If the person choosing is an engineer picking an API, .io is the safer signal. If the person choosing is signing off a service contract, .cloud is.
The structural difference matters more than the branding, and almost nobody mentions it. A .io is a country-code extension for the British Indian Ocean Territory, borrowed by an industry that liked the letters. A .cloud is a generic extension whose word means what it says. That hands .cloud one advantage nobody markets: it is not tied to an ISO country code, so it is not exposed to the sovereignty question that has hung over .io since 2024.
Both sit well above a .co.uk in annual cost, and neither carries a geographic signal in Google. If price alone is deciding this for you, the honest answer is a third extension.
| .cloud | .io | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Generic, the word means what it says | Country-code, used generically |
| In the root zone since | 2015 | 1997 |
| Registry | Aruba PEC S.p.A., Italy | Internet Computer Bureau, UK |
| Reads as | An operated service, infrastructure | A developer tool, an API, a project |
| Tied to a country code | No | Yes, ISO 3166-1 IO |
| Sub-domain policy | Sub-registry use restricted | No equivalent clause |
.cloud domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .cloud domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyAnyone. The registry states in its own registration policies that outside the original trademark sunrise there are no eligibility restrictions or prerequisites on who may apply, so there is no company check, no sector test and no local presence rule. Registrations run from one to ten years. The only names you cannot have are the ones the registry has reserved, which includes a premium list it releases by auction or by proposal rather than on a first come, first served basis.
Check with the registry before you build it. Section 31 of the .cloud registration policies says sub-domains are not permitted for commercial or non-commercial use without the express permission of the registry operator, and that you must not register a name in order to create a sub-registry. Running your own www, app or mail host is ordinary use and nobody is troubled by it. Allocating names to third parties as part of your product is the behaviour the clause describes, and it is worth an email first.
It is neutral, with one caveat that matters in the UK. Google says a country-code extension gives a strong signal that a site is intended for a particular country, while a generic extension needs its geographic targeting set explicitly by other means. A .cloud is generic, so it starts with no country signal at all. Nobody should expect the word after the dot to rank them for cloud queries either. The extension is a name, not a keyword you can buy.
The registry charges more for it, and that price recurs every year rather than being a one-off launch fee. Aruba PEC also designates some names as premium, and a premium name can be priced well above the standard figure shown on this page. If the name you want looks unusually good, ask us for the exact registration and renewal price before you commit, because on a premium name those two are not always the same number.
Some will, and it is worth planning for rather than pretending otherwise. Said aloud, "dot cloud" is close enough to "dot com" to be misheard, especially over a phone line or in a noisy room. The usual fix costs a few pounds: register the matching .com or .co.uk, point it at the same site, and the mistake becomes a redirect instead of a lost visitor. Do the same for any obvious misspelling of the name itself.
Usually a few days rather than minutes. You will need the authorisation code from your current registrar, the domain has to be unlocked, and it must be more than 60 days past its registration or its last transfer. Nothing is lost in the move: whatever time was left on the registration comes with it, and the transfer puts another year on top. This is slower than a .uk domain, which moves almost immediately because a .uk transfer is only a change of IPS tag at Nominet.
Included with Your .cloud 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 Technology Domains Extensions
Register your .cloud domain today
Secure your .cloud domain from just £24.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
