.sx Domain
Sint Maarten's Caribbean Domain
Register your .sx domain from just £49.00/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .sx domain?
The .sx domain is the country code for Sint Maarten, the Dutch-administered southern half of the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. Managed by SX Registry, it's a relatively new ccTLD (launched in 2012 after Sint Maarten became a constituent country of the Netherlands). The extension is open to worldwide registration. Its two-letter format and Caribbean association make it appealing for tourism brands, and the "sx" combination works for creative domain hacks.
Who should register .sx?
Caribbean tourism operators, Sint Maarten businesses, creative brands, and companies wanting a short Caribbean-associated domain.
Why choose .sx?
- Official domain for Sint Maarten (Caribbean)
- Open to worldwide registration
- Short two-letter extension with creative potential
- Newer namespace with strong availability
Who runs .sx, and since when
Registry data from the .sx 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
- SX Registry SA B.V.
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2010
- Delegated 20 December 2010
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide; a Sint Maarten address is not required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £49.00 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What .sx inherited when the Netherlands Antilles ended
.sx exists because a country stopped existing. The Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in October 2010, its .an extension is no longer present in the root zone, and Sint Maarten became a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands with a code of its own. The registry ran a grandfather phase in 2012 so that holders of .an names registered before December 2010 with a Sint Maarten address could claim the matching .sx before anybody else.
That is a useful thing to know when somebody tells you a country code is permanent. It is not, and .an is the proof. What protects .sx is that Sint Maarten is a real jurisdiction with a working registry: SX Registry SA, with technical operations handled by CIRA in Canada.
Registration is open. The registry states that every natural person or organisation can register a .sx and that an address on the island is not required. Names run three to sixty-three characters, letters, digits and hyphens only, with no hyphen at the start or the end, and terms of one to ten years. General availability opened on 15 November 2012, so the short names have had more than a decade of picking over.
Is .sx the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.sx works well if
- You are a Sint Maarten business or a Caribbean operator and want the address that names your own jurisdiction rather than a generic one.
- Your initials or your name end in those two letters, or they carry meaning in your sector, and you want a short address.
- You want to hold the name for a decade in a single order, which the registry supports directly.
Look elsewhere if
- Price. It is one of the dearer endings we sell, and it carries neither the recognition of a .com nor the local reach of a .co.uk.
- You need something very short. The registry sets a three-character minimum, and the memorable ones went in the 2012 landrush.
- Your audience is British and not technical. Nobody here reads .sx as a country, and a few will read it as something else entirely.
Selling to UK customers? A .co.uk is understood on sight and costs a small fraction of this. See .co.uk pricing.
.sx vs .vc: which should you register?
Two Caribbean country codes, both open to the world, both sold well outside their islands. The difference is that .vc arrived with a second meaning attached, because VC is the standard shorthand for venture capital. SX says nothing at all to anybody who is not from Sint Maarten.
That leaves .sx competing on brevity alone, and it is the more expensive of the two here. If your name really does end in those letters, or your business is on the island, it earns the money. If you are simply shopping for a short two-letter ending with no other requirement, .vc gives you the same brevity plus a meaning a whole industry already recognises.
.sx domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .sx domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. The registry states that every natural person or organisation can register a .sx domain name and that an address on the island is not required. There was a Sint Maarten priority phase in 2012 for local companies and residents, which did require documents such as a Chamber of Commerce registration or a local identity card, but that closed before general availability opened in November 2012. Since then it has been first come, first served, worldwide.
The Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in 2010 and .an is no longer present in the root zone. .sx was delegated to Sint Maarten as one of the successors and is not at risk in the same way, because Sint Maarten is a constituent country with an active registry rather than a dissolved federation. The wider lesson still holds: country codes follow political reality, so for an address you expect to keep for decades, a generic extension carries less of that risk.
Three characters. The registry sets a minimum of three and a maximum of sixty-three, allows letters, digits and hyphens, and forbids a hyphen at the start or the end. One and two character names are not available to the public. Registration terms run from one to ten years. Given that general availability opened in November 2012, expect the obvious three and four letter combinations to have gone, so search early rather than assuming a short one is waiting for you.
Included with Your .sx 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 .sx domain today
Secure your .sx domain from just £49.00/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
