.pw Domain
Palau's Domain for Professional Websites
Register your .pw domain from just £41.00/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .pw domain?
The .pw domain is the country code for Palau, a Pacific island republic. It has been marketed globally as "Professional Web" to broaden its appeal beyond the small island nation. Micronesia Investment and Development Corporation is the manager on IANA's record, while Radix operates the extension commercially with CentralNic providing the technical registry. Short, two-letter extensions are always in demand, and .pw offers availability that .com and other saturated namespaces can't match.
Who should register .pw?
Professionals, consultants, small businesses, and anyone wanting a short domain with good availability.
Why choose .pw?
- Marketed as "Professional Web" globally
- Short two-letter extension with good availability
- Open to worldwide registration
- Alternative when .com is taken
Who runs .pw, and since when
Registry data from the .pw 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
- Country-code (ccTLD)
- Registry operator
- Micronesia Investment and Development Corporation
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 1997
- Delegated 12 June 1997
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no Palau connection and no documents required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £41.00 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
How Palau's ccTLD was relaunched as Professional Web
Palau has a population smaller than a market town, and its country code sat almost unused for fifteen years. In 2012 the Directi group took it to market as a general-purpose extension, reading PW as Professional Web, with CentralNic running the technical registry. Sunrise opened on 3 December 2012, landrush followed in February 2013, and general availability began on 25 March 2013. Radix has run it since.
The registry is blunt about eligibility: anyone in the world can register a .pw domain name, no country restrictions and no documents required. Names are available in a long list of scripts including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Russian and Turkish.
Now the part a seller would rather skip. A cheap, open, brand new namespace attracts bulk registration, and .pw's own registry answered that by publishing a twelve-heading anti-abuse policy covering spam, phishing, fast flux and botnet command and control, and by becoming the first top-level domain to adopt ICANN's Uniform Rapid Suspension. Read that as a registry taking the problem seriously, and also as evidence the problem existed. If your customers are not technical, an unfamiliar two-letter ending is a hurdle you do not need.
Is .pw the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.pw works well if
- You want a short, available name for a project or a personal professional site, and you do not need the extension itself to sell anything.
- Your name ends in those letters, or the initials work, so the two-letter ending makes the whole thing read as one word.
- You are buying it as a redirect pointing at a main site, rather than as the address customers will type from memory.
Look elsewhere if
- You need customers to trust the address on sight. Recognition of .pw outside the domain industry is close to nil.
- You will read it aloud. Saying dot P W over the phone invites dot P E W and dot B W back down the line.
- Price. It costs several times a .co.uk here for an extension that carries no country benefit and no settled meaning.
Want a short, credible address for a UK business? A .co.uk costs far less and needs no explaining. See .co.uk pricing.
.pw vs .com: which should you register?
Nobody registers .pw because it beats .com on merit. They register it because the .com they wanted has gone and .pw still has short names left at a sensible length. That is a real advantage, and it is the only one.
What .com gives back is the thing .pw cannot buy: people type it without thinking, and nobody has to be told what it is. If your address will appear on a van, a leaflet or a phone call, that matters more than availability. If it will appear in a chat window between developers, it matters much less. Where the budget stretches to both, hold the .com and let the .pw carry the short link.
.pw domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .pw domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyYes. PW is the ISO country code for the Republic of Palau, and the extension has been in the root zone since 1997 with the Micronesia Investment and Development Corporation as the recorded manager. What changed in 2012 is how it is sold: it was relaunched as a general-purpose extension reading PW as Professional Web, open to anyone anywhere. Palau itself has very little to do with the names being registered, which is normal for a repurposed country code.
No. The registry states plainly that anyone in the world can register a .pw domain name, with no country restrictions and no documents required. Allocation is first come, first served, and names are supported in a wide range of scripts. That total absence of any check is exactly what made the extension attractive to bulk registrants after the 2013 relaunch, and it is why the registry runs an unusually detailed anti-abuse policy today.
Treat it with care. The registry has real abuse controls, including a twelve-heading acceptable use policy and early adoption of Uniform Rapid Suspension, but reputation at the receiving end is decided by mail providers and by your recipients, not by the registry. An unfamiliar two-letter ending on an invoice or a payment request gets a second look you do not want. If deliverability and customer confidence matter, put the mailbox on a .co.uk or a .com and keep the .pw for links.
Included with Your .pw 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 .pw domain today
Secure your .pw domain from just £41.00/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
