.kim Domain
A Domain for People Called Kim
Register your .kim domain from just £23.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .kim domain?
The .kim domain is a personal name TLD, popular with individuals named Kim and with Korean communities (Kim being one of the most common Korean surnames). Personal blogs, family sites, and portfolio pages for people named Kim find a natural home here. It's also used by businesses in Korea and diaspora communities.
Who should register .kim?
Individuals named Kim, Korean diaspora communities, personal blogs, and family history sites.
Why choose .kim?
- Popular Korean surname extension
- Personal and memorable
- Works for individuals and families
- Short at three letters
Who runs .kim, and since when
Registry data from the .kim 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
- Identity Digital Limited
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2013
- Delegated 19 December 2013
- Who can register
- Open to anyone, with no requirement to be called Kim or to have any Korean link
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £23.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
A surname domain with no name check
.kim was in the root zone before most people had heard that new extensions were coming. It was entered on 19 December 2013, roughly eight weeks after the first four extensions of the 2012 application round arrived, all of which were internationalised names. Afilias signed the registry agreement that September, and Identity Digital, which absorbed Afilias, runs it now under a plain base agreement.
Plain base agreement is the part that matters. Nothing checks your name. You don't have to be called Kim, be related to anyone called Kim, or have any connection to Korea, where Kim is among the most common surnames. Anyone can register any available .kim for any purpose at all, which makes it useful as a personal address and worthless as proof of identity.
The practical catch is how it reads in Britain. To a UK ear, Kim is a first name rather than a family name, so both kim.example and example.kim read as a person. That works nicely for a portfolio or a family history site and awkwardly for a business, unless the business is named after a founder who happens to be a Kim.
Is .kim the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.kim works well if
- Your surname or your first name is Kim, and you want a personal site whose address is your name and nothing else at all.
- You are building a family history or reunion site for a Kim family and want a short address relatives can remember without looking it up.
- You run a personal brand under a single name and the .com went decades ago. Three characters after the dot is as short as things get.
Look elsewhere if
- Nobody involved is called Kim. The extension only works as a name, and a name that is not yours is a puzzle for every visitor.
- It is a trading business address. Customers reading yourshop.kim cannot tell whether that is a country, a company or a typing error.
- You sell to UK customers. A .co.uk costs less than half as much each year and gives Google a local signal that .kim cannot.
Want a personal site without tying it to one name? A .name is cheaper and works whatever you are called. See .name pricing.
.kim vs .name: which should you register?
.name was built for exactly this and has been in the root zone since August 2001, run by Verisign. It works for anybody, which is its advantage and its weakness: it says a person lives here and nothing more than that. .kim says which person, or at least which family, which is a far stronger signal on the occasions when it happens to be true.
.name is the cheaper of the two per year as well. The steer is simple. Called Kim? .kim is the more memorable address and worth the difference. Not called Kim? .name does the job without asking every visitor to work out the connection.
.kim domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .kim domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. Identity Digital runs .kim under a plain ICANN base agreement with no eligibility test, so there is no name check, no documentation and no Korean connection required. Anyone can register any available .kim. The flip side is that the extension proves nothing about who owns a site, so treat a .kim address as a stylistic choice rather than as evidence that the person behind it is actually a Kim.
It entered the root zone on 19 December 2013, which puts it among the earliest extensions of the 2012 application round. The first four, all internationalised names, arrived that October. Afilias signed the registry agreement on 23 September 2013 and IANA announced the delegation in January 2014. Afilias was later absorbed into what is now Identity Digital, which is the operator recorded in the IANA root zone database today.
Rarely, unless the business is a person. The word is a name, so it fits a portfolio, a personal blog or a one-person consultancy trading under a founder called Kim. Put it in front of a shop or an agency and customers have to work out what the letters are doing there, which is friction on every business card and every phone call. For anything selling to UK customers, a .co.uk costs less and does more.
Included with Your .kim 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 .kim domain today
Secure your .kim domain from just £23.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
