.dog Domain
Every Good Dog Deserves a Domain
Register your .dog domain from just £52.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .dog domain?
The .dog domain is for businesses and communities built around man's best friend. Dog groomers, breeders, walking services, pet product retailers, and rescue charities all serve a market where owners treat their pets like family. A .dog domain connects with that passion.
Who should register .dog?
Dog groomers, breeders, walking services, pet product retailers, and dog rescue charities.
Why choose .dog?
- Connects with passionate dog owners
- Short and immediately understood
- Covers grooming, breeding, and rescue
- Fun and approachable branding
Who runs .dog, and since when
Registry data from the .dog 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
- 2015
- Delegated 16 April 2015
- Who can register
- Open to anyone, with no kennel licence, breeder registration or trade check
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £52.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Licensing rules behind a UK .dog website
If your .dog site advertises a dog for sale, English law is specific about what has to be on the page. Under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, any advertisement for the sale of an animal must include the licence holder's licence number, specify the local authority that issued the licence, include a recognisable photograph of the animal, display its age, and state both the country of residence it is being sold from and its country of origin. A web page is an advertisement. A great many breeder sites carry the photograph and stop there.
The licensing catches more businesses than people expect. Selling animals as pets in the course of a business is licensable, and so is providing boarding for dogs in kennels, providing home boarding for dogs, and providing day care for dogs. Whether something counts as a business is judged on questions like whether you make a sale with a view to profit or earn a fee or commission, so a home boarder taking two dogs a week for money can be inside the scope. The licence comes from the local authority.
The domain itself checks none of this. Binky Moon, LLC runs .dog under Identity Digital and asks for no licence number, no council reference and no trade body. The extension is short, reads warmly and works across grooming, walking, training, rescue and retail. It also costs several times a .co.uk every year, and a dog business rarely has money to burn.
The practical position for most: take the .co.uk if your customers live a few miles away, because local search rewards it and the price gap is wide. Take the .dog when the brand travels beyond a postcode and the address has to be memorable out loud.
Is .dog the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.dog works well if
- Your brand name is the whole identity and you want the category in one syllable: barkside.dog rather than barksidedoggrooming.co.uk.
- You sell products rather than services, so customers are not tied to a postcode and the UK search signal matters much less.
- You run a rescue or a community and need a short address people can pass on by word of mouth at an event or a show.
- One brand covers a groomer, a shop and a training arm, and the sector word sits comfortably over all three.
Look elsewhere if
- Your customers live within a few miles of the van. A .co.uk carries a UK signal in local search that .dog does not, at a small fraction of the price.
- You are a one-person walking or sitting business. The annual renewal here is real money against a service priced by the hour.
- You also work with cats and small animals. The address names one species and quietly turns the rest into an afterthought.
Walking, grooming or day care within a few miles? A .co.uk does more in local search and costs far less each year. See .co.uk pricing.
.dog vs .co.uk: which should you register?
For a dog business serving one area this is not a close contest. Local search rewards a .co.uk, the price is a fraction, and WHOIS privacy is free because Nominet lets a UK individual keep their name and address off the public record. Transfers are near instant because they are only an IPS tag change. A .dog offers none of that.
What it does offer is a short, warm, memorable address for a brand that does not live in one postcode: a product line, a rescue, a training method, a community that meets in different parks. If people are going to hear your address rather than search for it, that is worth something real.
The usual answer is both. Register the .co.uk as the working address and the .dog as the one on the van, then point one at the other. Two registrations still costs less than reprinting the livery.
| .dog | .co.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Local search signal | None | United Kingdom |
| WHOIS privacy | Paid add-on | Free for UK individuals |
| Transfer time | A few days | Near instant, IPS tag STACK |
| Annual cost | Several times a .co.uk | Among the cheapest we sell |
| Covers cats and other pets | Not really | Yes |
.dog domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .dog domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyFor most of them yes, and it comes from the local authority. The 2018 licensing regulations make selling animals as pets in the course of a business licensable, along with providing boarding for dogs in kennels, home boarding for dogs, and day care for dogs. Whether an activity counts as a business is judged on factors such as whether you make a sale with a view to profit or earn a fee or commission, so small home-boarding arrangements can fall inside it.
Any advertisement for the sale of an animal has to carry the licence holder's licence number, name the local authority that issued the licence, include a recognisable photograph of the animal, display its age, and state the country of residence it is sold from and its country of origin. That applies to a web page exactly as it applies to a classified advert. Put those fields in the listing template rather than the free-text description and they stay correct as litters change.
For a vet, probably. Choosing a practice is a serious decision and the ending reads as friendly rather than clinical, which suits a groomer or a day care far better than a surgery. There is a species problem as well, since a practice seeing cats, rabbits and reptiles has narrowed itself to one animal in the address. A .co.uk with the practice name is the safer buy and costs a good deal less.
Several times more, and every year. The figure on this page is the annual registration price excluding VAT and it renews at the same rate. A .co.uk is among the cheapest domains a UK business will ever buy, renews cheaply, and includes free WHOIS privacy for an individual registrant because Nominet keeps a UK person's name and address off the public record. On a .dog, privacy is a paid add-on. Price both over ten years before deciding.
Included with Your .dog 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 Lifestyle Domains Extensions
Register your .dog domain today
Secure your .dog domain from just £52.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
