.joburg Domain
Johannesburg's Own City Domain
Register your .joburg domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone may register a .joburg, but the registry rejects two-character names and will not accept a registration without at least two nameservers. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .joburg domain?
The .joburg domain represents Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city and the economic engine of the continent. "Joburg" is the local nickname that every South African uses. Managed by ZA Central Registry, .joburg gives businesses in Gauteng province a domain that feels unmistakably local. From Sandton's financial district to Soweto's cultural landmarks, .joburg captures the city's energy. Open to anyone, but most powerful for businesses with real Joburg ties.
Who should register .joburg?
Johannesburg-based businesses, Gauteng property firms, local restaurants and venues, and organisations serving the Joburg metro area.
Why choose .joburg?
- Represents Africa's largest economic hub
- Uses the beloved local nickname "Joburg"
- Managed by ZA Central Registry
- Strong local identity for Gauteng businesses
Who runs .joburg, and since when
Registry data from the .joburg 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; the registry policy sets no Johannesburg or South Africa requirement
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £19.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What ZACR's dotJoburg policy actually requires of you
Most city extensions are sold on sentiment. The interesting part of .joburg is in the paperwork. ZACR's published dotJoburg policy runs to eleven chapters, and two of its rules will stop an order that a .com would have taken without comment: a domain name may not be two characters long, and every registration must arrive with a minimum of two and a maximum of ten nameserver records. There is no parking a .joburg with no DNS and sorting it out next week.
It is a thick registry, so four separate contacts sit on every domain (registrant, administrative, technical and billing), although one person may fill all four. Registration terms run from one to ten years, transfers are blocked for the first sixty days, and the reserved list includes a category the policy labels Offensive, which is withheld outright rather than held back for sale.
What the policy does not contain is an eligibility test. There is no clause requiring a Johannesburg address, a Gauteng trading history or a South African company number anywhere in it. The city connection here is a marketing proposition, not a rule.
Who is allowed to register .joburg?
Anyone may register a .joburg, but the registry rejects two-character names and will not accept a registration without at least two nameservers.
- Who qualifies
- Nobody is excluded. The dotJoburg policy sets no residency, nationality or company condition, so a UK business can hold one on exactly the same terms as a Johannesburg business.
- Name length and characters
- Names use a to z, digits and hyphens only, up to 63 characters. A hyphen may not start or end the name, and you cannot have more than two consecutive hyphens without a character between them. Two-character names are reserved and cannot be registered at all.
- Nameservers at registration
- Between two and ten zone records must be supplied with the order. The registry does not verify that they answer at that moment, but it reserves the right to run checks later and tell your registrar if a nameserver has gone quiet.
- Four contacts, always
- Every domain carries a registrant, administrative, technical and billing contact. They may all be the same person, but a registrar may not put itself down as the registrant.
- If something goes wrong
- ZACR reserves the right to cancel, transfer or suspend a registration where keeping it would put the administrator in conflict with any law, a UDRP decision or a court order with jurisdiction.
Rules taken from the dotJoburg 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 .joburg the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.joburg works well if
- You trade in Johannesburg and want the address to say so without spelling out Gauteng or South Africa. Local shorthand does that in one word.
- Your co.za has gone and you would rather hold the exact name on a city extension than a padded co.za nobody remembers.
- The site is for a venue, an event or a campaign tied to the city, where the extension carries the geography for you.
Look elsewhere if
- You want a South African ranking signal. Google treats .joburg as generic rather than as a country code, so it does nothing in search that a co.za would do.
- The namespace is small. Most South African customers still expect co.za, and an unfamiliar extension asks them to trust you before they have read a word.
- You have no DNS ready. At least two nameservers must go in with the registration, so a bare parked domain is not an option on this extension.
If most of your customers sit outside Johannesburg, the .com is still the address they will type from memory. See .com pricing.
.joburg vs .com: which should you register?
A .com is the default, which is both its strength and its problem: it says nothing about you except that you exist. A .joburg says one thing loudly, and only to people who know the city.
That makes the choice easy to reason about. If your customers are in Johannesburg, the extension is doing work a .com cannot, and it is cheap enough that holding both is hardly a decision. If your customers are anywhere else, the .com is the address they type from memory and the .joburg is local colour on the side of a vehicle. What you should not do is run the business on the .joburg while the matching .com belongs to somebody else.
.joburg domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .joburg domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. ZACR's published dotJoburg policy contains no residency, nationality or company requirement, so a business in Kettering can register one as easily as a business in Sandton. What the policy does require is technical: at least two nameservers with the order, four contact records on the domain, and a name of at least three characters. Whether a .joburg is a sensible buy without a Johannesburg connection is a different question, and the answer is usually no.
It does not. Google's documentation says any extension ICANN has not classified as a country code is treated as a generic top-level domain, and .joburg is a generic extension. A co.za carries the South African signal; .joburg carries a brand association with the city and nothing more. Use it for recognition and recall rather than for local search, and set your geographic target explicitly in Search Console if you need one.
Two-character labels are on the registry's reserved list, and the dotJoburg policy states plainly that they may not be registered. The same reservation appears in other extensions from the same wave, tied to their ICANN registry agreements, so it is a convention across the 2014 round rather than a ZACR decision you could appeal. If the two-letter name you wanted is out, the fix is a longer name, and your registrar can check the reserved list before you order.
Included with Your .joburg 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 .joburg domain today
Secure your .joburg domain from just £19.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
