.durban Domain
South Africa's Coastal City Gets Its Own Domain
Register your .durban domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
There is no eligibility test whatsoever. The rules that catch people out concern the name and the name servers. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .durban domain?
The .durban domain represents Durban, South Africa's third-largest city and the busiest port in Africa. Known for its warm Indian Ocean beaches, celebrated curry scene, and growing tech sector, Durban has a character all its own. Managed by ZA Central Registry, .durban gives local businesses a domain that captures the city's identity. Open to anyone, but strongest for businesses with real Durban connections.
Who should register .durban?
Durban-based businesses, KwaZulu-Natal tourism operators, local restaurants and venues, and property firms in the Durban metro area.
Why choose .durban?
- Dedicated domain for South Africa's third-largest city
- Strong tourism and port city identity
- Managed by ZA Central Registry
- Captures Durban's distinct regional character
Who runs .durban, and since when
Registry data from the .durban 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
- ZA Central Registry NPC trading as ZA Central Registry
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 5 June 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no Durban or South African connection required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £19.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What ZACR gave up to keep running .durban
Durban got its own extension in 2014, alongside .joburg and .capetown, under a plan to give three South African cities a namespace of their own. The registry behind them, ZA Central Registry, also ran co.za, net.za, org.za and web.za at the time.
It does not any more, and that is the part worth knowing. In 2022 ZACR handed administration of the .ZA second level domains to ZA Registry Consortium and kept the three city extensions. ZACR now exists to run .joburg, .capetown and .durban and nothing else. That makes it a more focused operator than most city extensions get, and a considerably smaller one.
The namespace itself is small. ZACR publishes a live domain count for each of the three cities on its own site at zacities.africa, and it is worth a look before you commit, because a city extension only works as a signal when enough local businesses use it for a visitor to recognise the pattern. In Durban, tourism, hospitality and property are where it reads most naturally, and where a visitor arriving from a search for the city is least likely to blink at it.
Who is allowed to register .durban?
There is no eligibility test whatsoever. The rules that catch people out concern the name and the name servers.
- No local connection required
- The published dotDurban policies impose no residency, address or business requirement, which is why the extension is held by firms outside the city as well as inside it. A .durban proves nothing about a connection to Durban.
- Name servers at registration
- A registration must supply between two and ten zone records, so you cannot park a .durban with no DNS behind it. The registry does not verify that those name servers are actually authoritative for the name, although it reserves the right to check later.
- No two letter names
- A .durban label cannot be two characters long. Two character names are designated as reserved, and the registry publishes a reserved list from which only the reserving party may register.
- Sixty days before you can move it
- A .durban cannot be transferred between registrars in the sixty days following registration. Terms run in one year blocks up to a maximum of ten, and a seven day window after registration lets a registrar cancel and refund.
Rules taken from the dotDurban published policies and procedures. Registry policy can change, so check before you buy if the answer matters to you.
Not sure whether you qualify? Ask us before you order and we will check the registry rules with you. We would rather answer the question than take an order the registry will refuse.
Is .durban the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.durban works well if
- You run a hotel, restaurant, tour operator or estate agency in the Durban metro, where naming the city in the address does real work.
- Your preferred co.za has gone and the city name gives you a shorter, more specific alternative than padding out the brand word.
- You market to visitors rather than locals, so the destination in the address helps somebody recognise you in a list of results.
Look elsewhere if
- Your customers are outside South Africa and have never met a city extension. Plenty of them will still type .com after your brand name.
- You need one address for a national business. A city in the domain works against you the day you open in Cape Town.
- You want the extension to imply local standing. Nothing is verified, so anyone anywhere can hold a .durban.
Trading across South Africa rather than one city? A .co.za covers the whole country and is far better recognised. See .co.za pricing.
.durban vs .co.za: which should you register?
A .co.za is the default South African business address and has been for three decades. Everybody recognises it, nobody has to be told what it means, and it does not narrow you to one city. That last point is the real trade-off: a .durban is a positioning decision that you may not want to make permanent.
Pick .co.za for a business that could sell anywhere in South Africa, or for the address on your invoices. Pick .durban when the city is the product, which is a fair description of tourism, hospitality, venues and property. If both matter, the usual answer is to hold the .co.za as the permanent address and run the .durban as a campaign or landing site pointing at it.
.durban domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .durban domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. The published dotDurban policies contain no residency, address or business requirement, so anyone anywhere in the world can register one. That cuts both ways. It makes the extension easy to buy, and it means holding one is not evidence of anything, so a visitor who knows the rules will not read a .durban address as proof you are local.
ZA Central Registry, a South African non-profit company, under a registry agreement with ICANN dated 24 March 2014. Since 2022 it has run only the three city extensions, .joburg, .capetown and .durban, after handing administration of co.za, net.za, org.za and web.za to ZA Registry Consortium. Its site for the three cities is at zacities.africa.
Not by itself. Google reads a generic top level domain such as .durban as generic, so the city in the extension is not a geographic ranking signal the way a country code is. What actually drives local visibility is a Google Business Profile with the right address, consistent citations, and pages that name the suburbs you serve. Treat .durban as a memorability and branding choice, not an SEO one.
Included with Your .durban 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 Geographic Domains Extensions
Register your .durban domain today
Secure your .durban domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
