.studio Domain
Bring Your Creative Studio Online
Register your .studio domain from just £34.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .studio domain?
The .studio domain is a versatile choice for any creative workspace, from design and photography studios to recording facilities and yoga spaces. It evokes a sense of craft, collaboration, and hands-on creativity.
Who should register .studio?
Creative studios, recording studios, design firms, yoga studios, and co-working spaces.
Why choose .studio?
- Versatile across creative fields
- Evokes craft and expertise
- Clean professional branding
- Memorable and distinctive
Who runs .studio, and since when
Registry data from the .studio 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
- Dog Beach, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2015
- Delegated 25 June 2015
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no creative-industry test or local presence rule
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £34.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why design and recording studios choose .studio
Pick any town and count the businesses whose name ends in the word Studio. Design studios, recording studios, pilates studios, tattoo studios, architecture practices that call themselves a studio because "practice" sounds stuffy. That crowding is why .studio domains exist, and it is why the good ones are still available: the .com and the .co.uk of "Ashcroft Studio" went years ago, but ashcroft.studio very likely has not.
The extension earns its keep by finishing the name instead of repeating it. A firm sitting on ashcroftdesignstudio.co.uk is spelling out in the address what the logo already says. The same firm on ashcroft.studio has something a client can read back down the phone in three syllables. That is the practical case, and for a business whose brand is the product it is a real one.
It gets less tidy abroad. In Italian a studio is a professional practice: studio legale for a law firm, studio medico for a doctor. In French and Spanish the everyday sense leans towards a small flat or a recording room. The word carries, but not identically, so a European client may read a slightly different profession into your address than a British one does.
Who runs .studio, and the block you cannot see
The extension has changed hands without a single holder noticing. It was applied for through United TLD Holdco, the entity Rightside used for its new extensions, and the IANA root zone record now names Dog Beach, LLC, care of Identity Digital, in Bellevue, Washington. Donuts bought Rightside in 2017 and renamed itself Identity Digital in 2022. None of that reached registrants, which is how a registry change should go. It is still worth knowing that the acceptable use policy your domain sits under belongs to whoever owns the registry this year, and Identity Digital reserves the right to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect or transfer a registration at its own discretion.
One quirk catches people out. Identity Digital sells trademark holders a block called the Domains Protected Marks List, which stops a label being registered across every extension in its portfolio at once. So a .studio can come back unavailable with no website behind it, nobody to buy it from, and nothing in a lookup. It is not for sale. It is blocked, and the block renews.
What we would tell a UK creative business: take the .studio if the name actually ends in the word, and register the .co.uk alongside it. Local enquiries still arrive through Google, and Google gives a .studio no UK signal at all.
Is .studio the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.studio works well if
- Your business name ends in the word Studio, so the extension completes it rather than repeating it, and the address shortens instead of growing.
- You are a design, photography, recording or architecture practice winning work on portfolio and referral rather than on a local Google search.
- The .com and .co.uk of your name are both held by other studios, and you would rather have a short address than bolt "design" or "uk" onto the front.
- You want the extension to say what kind of business you are in the one place a stranger sees before they click anything.
Look elsewhere if
- Most of your work comes from people searching "photography studio near me". Google reads .studio as generic, so it does nothing locally that a .co.uk would do.
- It costs roughly three and a half times a .co.uk every year, and that difference recurs for as long as you trade.
- You give your address out over the phone constantly. People hear "studio" and write down .com, or run the two words together.
- Your customers are older or not confident online, and treat any extension that is not .com or .co.uk as a link worth avoiding.
Most of your enquiries arriving through local search? Register the .co.uk as the main address and point the .studio at it. See .co.uk pricing.
.studio vs .co.uk: which should you register?
For a British studio this is the only comparison that matters, and the two extensions are doing different jobs. A .co.uk is a search asset. A .studio is a brand asset. Google says outright that a country-code extension signals which country a site is meant for, and .co.uk collects that signal automatically, which is why a Kettering photographer who dropped it would notice.
Where .co.uk wins: local search, price, free WHOIS privacy for UK individuals under Nominet's consent rules, and transfers that complete almost instantly because they are an IPS tag change rather than a registrar-to-registrar move. Where .studio wins: a name that reads as a name, availability while the .co.uk is gone, and an audience that judges you on the work rather than on a postcode.
Run both. The .co.uk costs less than a takeaway, and pointing one at the other takes a redirect. Which of the two you make the canonical address depends on where the work comes from, not on which looks better on a business card.
| .studio | .co.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Generic, no country ties | Country-code for the United Kingdom |
| Signal to Google | None | Strong signal for UK results |
| Annual cost | Around three and a half times a .co.uk | The cheapest extension we sell |
| Transfer in | Days, using an auth code | Minutes, using an IPS tag change |
| WHOIS privacy | Paid add-on | Free for UK individuals |
| Reads as | A kind of business | A British business |
.studio domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .studio domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyAnyone, anywhere. There is no test of whether you run a creative business, no trade body membership to evidence and no local presence rule, so a plumber could register one. Names go on a first come, first served basis through any accredited registrar. The registry recorded at IANA is Dog Beach, LLC, an Identity Digital company, and the only real limits are the reserved and premium name lists that every extension keeps.
It is neutral, which is not the same as bad. Google treats .studio as a generic extension, so it carries no geographic meaning in either direction and no ranking penalty either. The practical consequence is one-sided: a .studio gets none of the UK signal that a .co.uk gets for free, so a studio whose customers search from Britain is giving something up. Nothing about the extension itself holds a well-built site back.
The registry charges more, and that is the whole answer. There is nothing different underneath: the same DNS, the same record types, the same DNSSEC support, the same nameservers. What you are paying for is the meaning of the word at the end. Check the figure on this page against a .co.uk before you commit, and treat it as an annual line in the accounts rather than a one-off, because it recurs every year the business exists.
Use the .co.uk as your main address if local enquiries pay the bills. Wedding, newborn, school and headshot work almost all starts with a search that has a place name in it, and the .co.uk carries a UK signal that .studio cannot. Register the .studio as well if the brand reads better on it, put it on cards and the van, and redirect it. That way the memorable address costs you a redirect rather than your visibility.
It can, and so can every other registry, which is worth saying plainly rather than pretending otherwise. Identity Digital reserves the right to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect or transfer any registration at its own discretion, chiefly for abuse: malware, phishing, botnets, harassment and similar. Ordinary businesses are not affected by this. Keep your registration details accurate and current, because inaccurate contact data is one of the grounds a registry can act on.
Included with Your .studio 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 Creative Domains Extensions
Register your .studio domain today
Secure your .studio domain from just £34.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
