.direct Domain
Cut Out the Middleman
Register your .direct domain from just £34.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .direct domain?
The .direct domain signals businesses that sell or communicate without intermediaries. Direct-to-consumer brands, factory outlet stores, and insurance companies selling direct to policyholders all benefit from a domain that tells customers they're getting the real deal with no markup. It carries a sense of transparency and value.
Who should register .direct?
Direct-to-consumer brands, factory outlets, direct insurance providers, and manufacturers selling to the public.
Why choose .direct?
- Signals no middleman involved
- Appeals to value-conscious buyers
- Works for retail and services
- Carries transparency and honesty
Who runs .direct, and since when
Registry data from the .direct 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 22 May 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no eligibility conditions
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £34.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
How .direct is used for branded short links
The most visible .direct name in Britain is not a website. Ask for sports.direct over plain HTTP and it redirects to a Bitly landing page for branded short domains, which means the retailer holds it as a link shortener for campaigns and social posts rather than as a place to sell trainers. That is a real and slightly unglamorous answer to what this extension is for, and it is more useful than the marketing one.
British retail happens to be full of brands built on the word: Shop Direct, Sports Direct, Screwfix Direct, a long list of insurers. For any of them the extension completes the name, so the .com they already own stays the shop and the .direct becomes the short address that fits in a text message or on a receipt.
Outside that pattern it gets weaker fast. If "direct" is not already in your trading name, an address ending in it is asking a customer to infer a promise about your supply chain from four letters after a dot, and most will not. They will type .com instead.
Is .direct the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.direct works well if
- Your trading name already ends in "Direct", so the extension finishes it and you get a much shorter address than the hyphenated .co.uk.
- You want a branded short-link domain for campaigns, texts and printed material, and you already run the main site somewhere else.
- You sell to consumers without a retailer in between and the word is a real part of how you position the business, not a slogan.
Look elsewhere if
- Your name does not contain the word. An unrelated brand on a .direct reads as a coincidence, and customers will type your .com out of habit.
- This is your only domain. A short-link extension used as a primary address gives up the UK search signal a .co.uk carries, for nothing in return.
- You are counting renewals. It costs several times a .co.uk each year, which is hard to justify for an address that mostly redirects.
If this would be your only domain and your customers are British, buy the .co.uk first and add this beside it. See .co.uk pricing.
.direct vs .co.uk: which should you register?
One is a working address and the other is a statement, so the choice is rarely either/or. A .co.uk is your address: it is what people type, what appears in UK search results, and what a customer recognises without thinking. A .direct is a second, shorter string you point somewhere, usually at a campaign or a specific product page.
Run them together and the split is easy. The .co.uk carries the site, the email and the search visibility. The .direct goes on the printed voucher, the radio ad and the SMS, because it saves characters and looks deliberate. Run only the .direct and you have taken on a higher annual cost, an unfamiliar ending and no geographic signal, in exchange for a naming trick that only pays off if the word was already yours.
.direct domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .direct domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes, and it is one of the more common uses. A branded short domain is just a domain whose DNS points at a shortening service, and .direct suits it because the word is short, reads as a call to action and is unlikely to be confused with your main site. Sports Direct runs sports.direct this way through Bitly. Every domain we sell includes free DNS management, so pointing one at a shortener or at your own redirect is included rather than an add-on.
Some will, and you should plan for it. Typing .com is close to a reflex for anyone who has been online more than a few years, so if your brand also exists on a .com held by somebody else, a share of your traffic will land on their site. That is manageable when the .direct is a campaign address you control the promotion of, and a real problem when it is the only address you have. Check who owns the matching .com before you decide.
No. Google published a plain answer to this in July 2015: keywords in an extension give no advantage or disadvantage in search, and new generic extensions are treated like .com and .org. So having "direct" after the dot will not rank you for direct-to-consumer queries. What does move the needle is the same list as always, which is useful pages, a fast site and links from places that matter. On UK queries specifically, a .co.uk gives a geographic signal this cannot.
Included with Your .direct 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 .direct domain today
Secure your .direct domain from just £34.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
