.pictures Domain
A Broader Canvas for Visual Content
Register your .pictures domain from just £16.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .pictures domain?
The .pictures domain is the broader sibling of .photos. It covers not just photographs but illustrations, digital art, image archives, and visual media in general. Museums digitising their collections, image libraries, and visual storytelling platforms find .pictures a better fit than the more photography-specific alternatives.
Who should register .pictures?
Image archives, museums with digital collections, visual storytelling platforms, and illustration portfolios.
Why choose .pictures?
- Broader than .photos or .photography
- Suits archives and digital collections
- Works for illustrations and mixed media
- Descriptive and easy to understand
Who runs .pictures, and since when
Registry data from the .pictures 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
- Binky Moon, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 3 April 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no eligibility test or documents to supply
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £16.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why .pictures reads as film to half your visitors
Say Pictures to somebody in the entertainment trade and they think of a film company. Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures: the word has meant motion pictures in that business for a century. Say it to an archivist and they think of images in a collection. Both readings are live, and .pictures lands somewhere between them depending on who is looking at your address. That ambiguity is not fatal, but it is worth testing on someone outside your field before you print it.
The strongest argument for it is the one nobody makes, because it is unglamorous: price. At the figure on this page .pictures is the cheapest extension in this whole category, under twice a .co.uk and below .photos, .photo and .photography. If a visual extension has been on your list and the annual cost put you off, start here.
It is a 2014 arrival with the standard Donuts history. IANA delegated it to Foggy Sky, LLC, one of the single-string companies Donuts set up to hold its 2012 applications, then moved it into Binky Moon, LLC in the March 2018 transfer of 196 extensions. Identity Digital runs it now. Nothing is verified, and no one checks whether your site contains a single image.
The one thing to be disciplined about is the plural. Eight letters is long, and the singular is an easy slip for anyone typing from memory. Pick the plural, use it everywhere, and put the domain in an email signature rather than relying on people to recall it.
Is .pictures the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.pictures works well if
- You are digitising a collection: a museum archive, a local history society, a picture library where the point is browsing many items.
- Budget is the deciding factor and you still want a descriptive extension. This is the cheapest one in the visual group by a clear margin.
- Your work spans illustration, artwork and photography, so an extension that only says photo would undersell half of what you publish.
- You are naming a film or television production company and want the trade reading of the word rather than the image-library one.
Look elsewhere if
- You need an address people can type from memory after hearing it once. Eight letters plus an easy singular slip is a real cost.
- You are a working photographer selling to consumers. .photos or .photography set the expectation more precisely for the same order of money.
- Your visitors are British consumers searching locally. A .co.uk carries a geographic signal in Google that no generic extension gives you.
Selling photography rather than curating a collection? .photos points at the images and reads more naturally to a client. See .photos pricing.
.pictures vs .photos: which should you register?
These two sit under the same operator, Binky Moon under Identity Digital, and were delegated four months apart in 2013 and 2014. Neither restricts who may register. So the choice is about the word and the price.
.photos is narrower and clearer. It means camera output, nothing else, and a client sent to a .photos link knows what to expect. .pictures is broader and cheaper. It stretches to illustration, artwork, scans and archive material, and it carries that film-industry echo that .photos does not.
The money is not trivial over a decade. .pictures runs well under .photos on our price list every year, and for a volunteer-run archive or a society keeping the lights on, that difference is the whole argument.
| .pictures | .photos | |
|---|---|---|
| Covers | Images, artwork, archives, film | Photographs |
| Second reading | Motion pictures, film studios | None |
| Length | 8 characters | 6 characters |
| Annual cost | Cheapest in this category | Around half again as much |
| In the root zone since | 2014 | 2013 |
.pictures domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .pictures domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes, and by a wide enough margin to matter. On our price list .pictures is the cheapest extension in the media and visual group, running below .photos, .photo and .photography. Over ten years the gap adds up to real money for a small archive or a society. Check both prices on this site before you order, because registry pricing does move, and compare the renewal rather than any first-year offer.
Both, which is the honest answer and the thing to plan around. In the film business Pictures has meant motion pictures for a century, so a production company reads it one way. An archivist or a gallery reads it as images. The words to the left of the dot decide which meaning your visitor lands on, so make them carry the subject rather than relying on the extension to do it.
Binky Moon, LLC, part of Identity Digital, is the operator on the IANA record. It did not start there. IANA delegated .pictures to Foggy Sky, LLC in April 2014, one of the many single-string companies Donuts created to hold its 2012 applications, and transferred it into Binky Moon along with 195 other extensions on 23 March 2018. No registration was affected by either change, which is the useful thing to know: registries change hands and domains carry on resolving.
Some will, and there is no way to stop it on an extension you do not control. The singular is a separate namespace, not an alias, so a visitor who guesses wrong lands nowhere at all rather than on your site. The practical defence is to stop relying on memory: put the address in email signatures, on printed material and in every profile you keep, and register the matching .co.uk as the address people actually recall.
Included with Your .pictures 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 Media & Content Domains Extensions
Register your .pictures domain today
Secure your .pictures domain from just £16.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
