.family Domain
A Domain for the Whole Family
Register your .family domain from just £29.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .family domain?
The .family domain connects businesses and organisations that serve families with their audience. From family law solicitors and genealogy researchers to family-friendly attractions, .family provides a warm and approachable web address.
Who should register .family?
Family services, genealogy sites, family-friendly businesses, and private family pages.
Why choose .family?
- Warm and approachable tone
- Covers diverse family services
- Great for private family sites
- Instantly understood
Who runs .family, and since when
Registry data from the .family 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
- Dog Beach, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2015
- Delegated 6 August 2015
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no relationship or household test of any kind
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £29.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
.family for a private site or a law firm
Two very different buyers reach for this one, and they pull the word in opposite directions. A family law firm or a mediation service wants an address that reads as competent and discreet. A reunion site, a photo archive or a genealogy project wants one that reads as warm. The .family domain hands them the same word, and the extension cannot tell a visitor which of the two they have arrived at.
Dog Beach, LLC holds it, one of the registry entities inside the Identity Digital group, and IANA records the delegation on 6 August 2015. That makes it the youngest extension in this group by some margin, which is why more short names in front of the dot are still there than you might expect.
The private-site case comes with a problem nobody mentions at the point of sale. A domain is an annual bill and a family website has no revenue behind it. Somebody pays for it every year, indefinitely, for something that gets updated at Christmas. If a renewal is missed there is a window in which the name can usually be recovered for a restore fee, and after that it returns to the pool and anyone may take it, along with every QR code you printed and every link anyone saved.
Two pieces of practical advice we give anyone registering one for a family rather than a business. Put it in a name and at an email address that will still exist in ten years, not a work account you lose when you change jobs. And leave automatic renewal switched on, because the failure here is not a bill you resent, it is a name you cannot get back.
Is .family the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.family works well if
- You are a family law firm, a mediation service or a genealogy researcher, and the word names who you serve rather than what you charge for.
- You are setting up a shared address for a reunion, a family archive or a private photo site, and people need to remember it without a bookmark.
- Your firm name is common enough that every sensible .co.uk has gone, and the extension gives that name a short partner.
- You run family-facing attractions or activities and print the address in places where a long name will not fit.
Look elsewhere if
- It reads warm, and warmth is not what every client wants from a solicitor. Test the address on a real client before it goes on letterhead.
- Nothing pays for a family website, so the renewal arrives every year against no income. Leave auto-renewal on or you will lose the name to somebody watching for it.
- A UK practice gives up the local search signal a .co.uk carries, and family law is exactly the kind of service people search for by town.
A UK practice taking most of its work from one county is usually better off on a .co.uk, with the .family pointed at it. See .co.uk pricing.
.family vs .com: which should you register?
For a private family site these barely compete, because the .com version of any common surname went two decades ago and what remains is the surname with a number or a word attached. A .family usually still has the clean version.
For a professional firm the calculation flips. A .com is invisible, in the useful sense: nobody notices it, nobody questions it, and nobody needs telling twice. A .family is a statement, and a statement has to be one your clients want to hear. In family law that is a real judgement call, because the same warmth that reassures one client reads as unserious to another in the middle of a contested matter.
Where both are affordable, the pattern that works is the familiar extension as the address of record and the .family as the one on the sign outside.
| .family | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| Registry | Dog Beach, LLC (Identity Digital) | VeriSign Global Registry Services |
| Root zone since | 2015 | 1985 |
| What the name says | Who you serve | Nothing at all |
| Short name still free | Frequently | Rarely, without hyphens |
| Annual cost here | About twice a .com | Low |
.family domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .family domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes. There is no household test, no relationship to prove and no restriction on who registers one. It is a common use for the extension: reunion sites, shared photo archives, family history projects and private pages for scattered relatives. Every domain we register includes free DNS management, email forwarding and one free 10GB mailbox, so a family address can carry email as well as a website without anything extra being bought.
It stops working, and then it stops being yours. Once a domain expires the website and any email on it go down, and there is a limited period in which it can usually be restored, generally for a fee larger than the renewal. After that the name is released and anyone may register it. For a family site with no business process behind it, this is the most common way people lose an address they cared about, so leave automatic renewal on and keep a contact email address you will still have in ten years.
It can be, with one caveat worth taking seriously. The extension describes your client base in a single word, which is efficient on a sign or a business card. But family law clients are often in the worst weeks of their lives, and a warm address reads as reassuring to some of them and as insufficiently serious to others. Test it on people before you print it. If your work comes mostly from local search, hold the .co.uk as the main address regardless, because a .family carries no UK signal.
Dog Beach, LLC, which the IANA root zone database lists as the sponsoring organisation, operating from the Identity Digital offices in Bellevue, Washington. The extension was delegated on 6 August 2015. Identity Digital is one of the two large registry groups behind most of the extensions in this category, so .family sits on the same infrastructure and the same published policies as .church, .city, .chat and .place, despite the different company name on the record.
Included with Your .family 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 Community Domains Extensions
Register your .family domain today
Secure your .family domain from just £29.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
