.tools Domain
The Right Tool for Every Trade
Register your .tools domain from just £31.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .tools domain?
The .tools domain crosses hardware and software. Power tool retailers, SaaS productivity platforms, and trade equipment suppliers all share the word "tools" as a core descriptor. It's one of those rare extensions that works equally well for a plumber's merchant and a developer's utility suite.
Who should register .tools?
Power tool retailers, SaaS utility platforms, trade equipment suppliers, and DIY product stores.
Why choose .tools?
- Spans hardware and software tools
- Clear product descriptor
- Works for trade and tech audiences
- Good availability of names
Who runs .tools, and since when
Registry data from the .tools 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 16 January 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no trade, software or business verification
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £31.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
One .tools extension, two very different industries
Two separate industries claim this word and they mean opposite things by it. To a builders merchant, tools are steel objects with a weight and a warranty. To a software team, tools are utilities: a converter, a calculator, a linter, something you open in a browser and never install. Both register .tools domains, and neither audience assumes the other exists.
That has a practical consequence worth thinking about before you buy. The extension does not disambiguate you. Somebody arriving at yourname.tools cannot tell from the address whether they are about to find a cordless drill or a JSON formatter, so the work of saying which one you are falls entirely on the name in front of the dot and on the page itself. If your name already carries the answer, the extension is fine. If it does not, you have added a word that raises a question rather than settling one.
This is one of the earliest of the 2014 wave. IANA has it entering the root zone on 16 January 2014, delegated to Pioneer North, LLC, and moving to Binky Moon, LLC in the March 2018 transfer that pulled 196 extensions under a single operator. No eligibility rule has ever attached to it, so a plumbing merchant and a solo developer register on identical terms.
For UK hardware retail we would still start with the .co.uk. For a free web utility with an international audience, .tools is one of the better descriptive extensions available, and short names in it are still there.
Is .tools the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.tools works well if
- You are naming a free web utility or a small suite of them, and you want the address to say what the site is for.
- Your trade name already reads as hardware, so brandname.tools removes any doubt about what the shop actually sells.
- You need somewhere to park a group of internal or customer-facing utilities without cluttering your main domain.
- The .com you wanted has gone and the alternative is a padded name nobody will remember correctly.
Look elsewhere if
- Your name does not say which industry you are in. The extension will not settle it, and visitors keep arriving expecting the other one.
- You sell hardware to UK trade and retail customers, where a .co.uk carries a country signal in Google that no generic extension does.
- You are cost sensitive across several domains. A .tools renews at several times a .co.uk and that gap widens every year you hold it.
Selling hardware to UK customers? The .co.uk is cheaper and reads as local in search. See .co.uk pricing.
.tools vs .com: which should you register?
For a software utility this is the only comparison that matters, and it is mostly about what is left. Short, exact .com names in any tooling category went years ago, so the real choice is a clean two-syllable .tools against a longer .com with get, my, the or app bolted on the front.
.com wins on default typing, on being safe with a non-technical audience, and on never needing to be explained. .tools wins on availability, on brevity, and on telling a developer what your site is before they click it.
For a hardware business the sum is different, because trade customers are not developers and many of them will type .com whatever you print. If your buyers are trade rather than technical, own the .com or the .co.uk as well and point it here.
| .tools | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Generic, descriptive | Generic, no meaning attached |
| In the root zone since | 16 January 2014 | 1985 |
| Reads clearly to | Developers and trade, differently | Everyone, the same way |
| Short names left | Plenty | Almost none |
| Annual cost | Several times a .co.uk | Low |
.tools domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .tools domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyBoth, and that is the extension's main weakness rather than its selling point. No rule separates the two, no category is assigned at registration, and nothing in the address tells a visitor which one they have found. Power tool retailers and web utility projects hold .tools domains side by side. The name in front of the dot has to carry the meaning, so pick one that already reads as hardware or already reads as software, and do not rely on the extension to do that job.
Anyone in any country, with nothing to prove. No trade membership, no company registration and no documents are required, and the registry does not check what the site is about. The one ongoing condition is Identity Digital's acceptable use policy, which lets the registry act over abuse and over registration data it finds to be inaccurate. That applies right across its range rather than to .tools in particular.
Not for local queries. Google reads country-code extensions such as .co.uk as pointing at one country and gives them a matching signal, while generic extensions like .tools carry no geography at all. Everything else is equal, so a .tools site can rank perfectly well on merit. A UK hardware retailer competing for local searches is simply starting a step behind on a signal that costs a few pounds a year to fix.
Yes, and it is one of the tidier uses for it. A separate domain keeps internal dashboards, converters and admin utilities off your main site, which makes access control and DNS easier to reason about. Every domain registered with us includes free DNS management, so pointing subdomains at internal or hosted services costs nothing extra. Remember it is still a public registration, and any hostname you issue a TLS certificate for appears in public certificate transparency logs.
Included with Your .tools 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 E-Commerce Domains Extensions
Register your .tools domain today
Secure your .tools domain from just £31.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
