.org Domain
The Domain for Organisations & Communities
Register your .org domain from just £14.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .org domain?
The .org extension has been the home of non-profit organisations, charities, and community groups since 1985. It carries a strong association with trust, purpose, and public service. If your organisation exists to make a difference, .org tells the world.
Who should register .org?
Charities, non-profits, community groups, and open-source projects.
Why choose .org?
- Instant association with trust and purpose
- Ideal for non-commercial organisations
- One of the original internet domains
- Recognised worldwide
Who runs .org, and since when
Registry data from the .org 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
- Public Interest Registry (PIR)
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 1985
- Delegated 1 January 1985
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide; no charity, non-profit or 501(c)(3) status required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £14.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Who owns .org, and why it nearly changed hands
The three big legacy extensions all entered the root zone on the same day in 1985. Verisign runs two of them commercially. The third, .org, is run by a non-profit, and that is most of what makes it different. The Internet Society created Public Interest Registry in 2002 as a 501(c)(3) organisation to manage it, and PIR took the registry over the following year in what its own history calls the biggest transfer in internet history. That ownership structure is a large part of why the extension reads as trustworthy, and in 2019 it very nearly stopped being true.
The year .org was almost sold
Two things happened in quick succession. In June 2019 ICANN renewed the .org registry agreement without the price caps that had governed the extension for the best part of two decades. Five months later the Internet Society announced it had agreed to sell PIR to Ethos Capital, a private equity firm, and to convert PIR from a Pennsylvania not-for-profit into a for-profit limited liability company. Registrants, charities and campaign groups objected loudly and at length. On 30 April 2020 the ICANN Board withheld its consent and the sale did not proceed. PIR is still the non-profit it was.
The price caps did not come back, and pretending otherwise would be misleading. What the current agreement gives you instead is notice and a lock. The registry must give registrars at least 180 days' warning of a renewal price increase, and must let them renew existing domains at the old price for up to ten years before the new one takes effect. So when a rise is announced, renewing several years forward is a real option rather than a sales line, and that ten-year window is written into the contract rather than being any registrar's goodwill.
Registration itself is wide open. PIR's own FAQ states that .ORG is an open and unrestricted domain and that anyone is allowed to register and use .ORG domain names. No charity number, no 501(c)(3) status, no country test, and the registry agreement carries no community eligibility specification at all. Plenty of ordinary companies hold one. The association with charities, campaigns and open-source projects is cultural rather than enforced, built up over forty years, and it is worth something precisely because nobody polices it.
For a UK charity or community group we would normally register both: the .org.uk for local search and the .org for everyone else, with one redirecting to the other. If the budget stretches to one and your supporters, donors and volunteers are all British, the .org.uk costs less and does more in Google UK. If you have members or funders abroad, take the .org.
After completing extensive due diligence, the ICANN Board finds that withholding consent of the transfer of PIR from the Internet Society (ISOC) to Ethos Capital is reasonable, and the right thing to do.
What that means if you are buying one
Read that as supervision rather than a guarantee. Nothing in the registry contract says .org must stay in non-profit hands. What stopped the sale was a public review anyone could watch coming and a board willing to say no. For an address you intend to hold for decades, a slow and visible process is worth more than a promise.
Is .org the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.org works well if
- You are a charity, campaign, membership body or community project with supporters outside the UK, so a national extension would be the wrong signal.
- You run an open-source project, a standard or a public dataset, where .org is what the audience already expects to type.
- You want the address to say the organisation is not primarily commercial, without having to write that anywhere on the page.
- You are protecting a brand you already hold on .com or .co.uk, and want the .org so that nobody else can imply they are your charitable arm.
Look elsewhere if
- You sell things and want people to buy them. Visitors read .org as non-commercial, so it can quietly work against a shopping cart or a booking form.
- Your supporters are entirely British. A .org.uk costs less, transfers near instantly, and carries a UK signal in Google that a generic extension does not.
- You need long-term price certainty. The 2019 registry agreement removed the price caps, so increases are limited by notice periods rather than by any ceiling.
- You expect the extension to prove your charitable status. It proves nothing: registration is open, unrestricted, and used by plenty of ordinary businesses.
UK charity with UK supporters? A .org.uk costs less and carries a UK signal in Google that .org cannot. See .org.uk pricing.
.org vs .org.uk: which should you register?
For a UK charity this is the decision that actually matters, and it turns on where your money and your members come from rather than on anything about the extensions themselves.
.org.uk is a Nominet second level domain. It is cheaper, it transfers near instantly because a .uk transfer is an IPS tag change rather than a registry-to-registry move, and privacy is free for UK individual registrants under Nominet's consent-based rules. It also carries a UK country signal in Google, worth real traffic if your volunteers and donors are domestic. Nominet lists its purpose as not-for-profit entities but publishes no eligibility rules for it, unlike .ltd.uk and .plc.uk, so that description is not a gate.
.org is the international default: what an overseas funder, a partner NGO or a journalist tries first, with none of the geographic narrowing that helps you at home and hinders you abroad. Hold both if you can, and point one at the other.
| .org | .org.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Registry | Public Interest Registry, a US non-profit | Nominet, the UK registry |
| Who may register | Anyone worldwide, unrestricted | Anyone; the not-for-profit purpose is descriptive |
| UK search signal | None; it is a generic extension | Yes, .uk is a country-code extension |
| Annual cost | Mid-range | Among the cheapest we sell |
| Transfer speed | Usually a few days | Near instant, an IPS tag change |
| WHOIS privacy | A paid add-on | Free for UK individuals under Nominet rules |
.org domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .org domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. Public Interest Registry states in its own FAQ that .ORG is an open and unrestricted domain and that anyone is allowed to register and use .ORG domain names. There is no charity number to give, no 501(c)(3) status to evidence and no geographic test, and the registry agreement carries no community eligibility specification. Companies, clubs, families, schools, associations and individuals all hold them. The charitable association is a convention rather than a rule.
Register both if you can, and make the one your supporters are likeliest to type the main site. If your donors, volunteers and grant funders are all British, .org.uk is the better primary: cheaper, a UK signal in Google, and free privacy for UK individual registrants under Nominet's consent-based rules. If you work internationally, make the .org primary. Point the other at it rather than running two sites.
Public Interest Registry, a non-profit created by the Internet Society in 2002, has run it since 2003. In November 2019 the Internet Society agreed to sell PIR to the private equity firm Ethos Capital and convert it into a for-profit company. The ICANN Board withheld consent on 30 April 2020 after months of public objection, so the sale never completed and PIR remains a non-profit. Of the three big legacy extensions it is the only one not in commercial hands: Verisign runs .com and .net.
Possibly, and no cap stops it. The 2019 registry agreement removed the price caps that had applied for around two decades, so what protects you now is process rather than a ceiling: the registry owes registrars at least 180 days' notice of a renewal increase, and must let them renew at the old price for up to ten years before it applies. That gives you warning and a way to act on it, which is not the same as a promise the price will hold.
No. Google treats both as generic extensions with no country association, so neither has a ranking advantage over the other. Anyone claiming search engines trust .org more is confusing readers with algorithms. Human trust is a separate question, and there .org does carry weight for non-commercial work. The measurable difference is geographic: a .org.uk or .co.uk carries a UK signal in Google UK results that neither .org nor .com has.
Yes. Registrations and renewals run from one to ten years, and a longer term is the practical defence against price rises, because the registry agreement lets registrars renew at the current price for up to ten years before a noticed increase takes effect. Do the sums first: paying a decade ahead ties up money now and only pays off if prices rise, so it suits an established organisation more than a new one.
Included with Your .org 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 Business Domains Extensions
Register your .org domain today
Secure your .org domain from just £14.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
