.services Domain
Tell Clients What You Deliver
Register your .services domain from just £33.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .services domain?
The .services domain is one of the most versatile business extensions. Cleaning services, IT services, financial services, legal services: the word describes the output of almost every service business. It works as a primary domain or as a dedicated section of a larger operation, and it pairs naturally with a company or location name.
Who should register .services?
Service businesses of any type, IT service providers, cleaning companies, and professional service firms.
Why choose .services?
- Works for virtually any service business
- Pairs naturally with company names
- Clear and descriptive
- One of the most versatile business TLDs
Who runs .services, and since when
Registry data from the .services 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 trade licence, company number or residency test
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £33.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
How UK service businesses use a .services domain
Look at how service firms in Britain name themselves and one shape keeps coming back. Barton Electrical Services, Kettering Cleaning Services, and every variation on that pattern: a place, a trade, then the word. It is already the last thing on the letterhead, which is the case for a .services domain in a sentence. bartonelectrical.services is the trading name with the extension finishing it off, rather than a name padded out to fit whatever was still free.
The pattern that works far less well is the category name. Buying cleaning.services or legal.services to catch searches for a whole sector is a plan that went out of date within weeks of launch. Those names went early, and Identity Digital reserves a slice of every extension it runs as premium inventory priced above the standard rate. So the realistic choice is your own name with the word on the end, which is the better buy in any case, because it is the name customers are trying to remember.
Who runs it, and what is actually restricted
The registry operator on record at IANA is Binky Moon, LLC, part of Identity Digital, and the extension entered the root zone on 3 April 2014 under an ICANN registry agreement signed on 27 February 2014. It is a base, non-sponsored agreement with no eligibility specification, so nobody checks what trade you are in or where you live. What the agreement does restrict is names rather than people: two character labels are held back, country and territory names are reserved, and the registry keeps its own reserved list on top of those. One quirk worth knowing is that there is no singular .service in the root zone at all, so a customer who drops the s reaches nothing rather than a stranger.
Our steer for a UK trade is to register the .co.uk first and keep this as the second address. Google says a country-code domain is a strong signal that a site is meant for a particular country, and .services carries no such signal, so for a business selling within an hour of home the cheaper domain is also the one doing more work. Where .services earns its keep is a firm whose name really does end in Services, a business covering several trades under one roof, or a separate site for the service arm of a product company.
Is .services the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.services works well if
- Your trading name already ends in the word Services, so the domain reads as the company name with the extension finishing the sentence.
- The .co.uk you wanted belongs to an unrelated firm, and every alternative needs a hyphen, a county name or an extra word bolted on.
- You run several trades under one roof and want one address covering all of them without promoting a single one above the rest.
- You are building a separate site for the service arm of a product business and want the address itself to mark the difference.
Look elsewhere if
- It costs roughly three times a .co.uk every year and that gap never closes. Ten years in, the difference is real money for a small firm.
- Google treats a country-code domain as a strong signal that a site is meant for that country. A .services gives no such signal in UK results.
- Said out loud it invites the singular. People hear dot service, type it, and reach nothing, because no .service extension exists in the root zone.
- A cautious client checking an invoice may not recognise the extension, and an unfamiliar address on a payment request is what people are told to distrust.
Working within an hour of home? Register the .co.uk first and keep this as the second address. See .co.uk pricing.
.services vs .co.uk: which should you register?
For a UK service business this is the comparison that matters, and it is not close on the numbers. A .co.uk is among the cheapest domains we sell, it has been available since Nominet started running the space, and it tells Google plainly which country the site is for. A .services costs several times as much every year and says nothing about geography at all.
Where .co.uk wins: price, local search, near instant transfers through the IPS tag system, and free WHOIS privacy for individual registrants under Nominet rules. That last one is not free on any generic extension, .services included, where privacy is a paid add-on. Where .services wins: availability, and a name that reads as a description rather than an abbreviation.
Most service firms should own the .co.uk whatever else they buy. If the .services version of the name is the one you want on the van, register it too and point one at the other. Two domains at these prices still costs less each year than a single premium extension.
| .services | .co.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Generic, open worldwide | UK country-code, second level |
| Root zone since | 2014 | 1985 |
| Signal to Google | None, treated as generic | Strong UK country signal |
| Annual cost | Around three times a .co.uk | Among the cheapest we sell |
| WHOIS privacy | Paid add-on | Free for UK individuals |
| Transfer in | Up to five days | Near instant IPS tag change |
.services domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .services domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyAnyone. There is no trade licence to show, no company number to quote and no residency test to pass. The ICANN registry agreement covering .services is a base, non-sponsored contract, and it carries a binding commitment that second level registrations will be open and available to lawful registrants. A sole trader, a limited company, a charity or a private individual can all hold one. What is restricted is names rather than people: two character labels and country names are reserved, and the registry keeps its own reserved list.
Usually not as the main address. A local electrician or cleaner gets found through searches tied to a place, and a .co.uk gives Google a country signal that a .services cannot, for roughly a third of the annual price. The case improves when the .co.uk you want has gone, when the business already trades under a name ending in Services, or when you want a distinct address for one arm of a larger operation. Buy the .co.uk first either way.
No. The root zone contains .services and no singular .service, so anyone who drops the s reaches nothing at all. That is the better of the two failures, because a mistyped address does not land your customer on somebody else's site, but it is still a lost visit. Print the full address on anything that goes out on paper, and say the word services clearly down the phone rather than trusting people to hear the plural.
No, and it will not help them either. Google set out its position in July 2015 and has not moved from it: new generic extensions are handled like .com and .org, and keywords in the extension carry no advantage or disadvantage. The difference that does exist is geographic. Google's current documentation on multi-regional sites treats a country-code domain as a strong signal that a site is intended for that country, and .services is not one of those.
The registry charges more at wholesale and Nominet charges very little. Nothing technical separates the two: DNS resolution, DNSSEC, mail records and TLS behave identically, and every domain we sell includes free DNS management, email forwarding and one free 10GB mailbox. You are paying for the word on the end. ICANN rules require 180 days notice before a renewal price rise and uniform renewal pricing across the extension, so registering for several years at once fixes the price for that period.
Yes, in defined circumstances, and that is true of every extension rather than this one in particular. Identity Digital's acceptable use policy reserves the right to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect or transfer a registration, and names malware, phishing, botnets, spam and fraud among the grounds. An ordinary business never goes near it. It matters more if you buy an expired domain whose history you have not checked, or run a site where visitors can post their own content.
Included with Your .services 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 .services domain today
Secure your .services domain from just £33.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
