.trade Domain
For Businesses That Trade
Register your .trade domain from just £27.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .trade domain?
The .trade domain is built for the commercial world. Import-export companies, trade associations, wholesale distributors, and B2B marketplaces all operate under the banner of "trade". It's a direct, no-nonsense extension that speaks to businesses whose primary activity is buying and selling goods between other businesses.
Who should register .trade?
Import-export firms, trade associations, wholesale distributors, and B2B marketplace operators.
Why choose .trade?
- Direct commercial signal
- Works for import-export and wholesale
- Speaks to B2B buyers
- Professional and established tone
Who runs .trade, and since when
Registry data from the .trade 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
- Elite Registry Limited
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 6 March 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no trade body or sector membership needed
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £27.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
What .trade means to a British audience
"Trade" splits neatly in two in British English and the extension inherits both readings. There is international trade, the world of importers, exporters, customs agents and B2B marketplaces that the registry had in mind. And there is the trade, meaning tradespeople: plumbers, sparks, builders' merchants, trade counters and trade-only pricing. A UK visitor decides which one you mean from your site, not from the address, and the ambiguity is not always unhelpful.
Worth knowing who runs it. Elite Registry Limited holds the agreement, the technical contact on the IANA record is GoDaddy Registry, and the operating brand is GRS Domains, which lists .trade in a portfolio alongside .win, .bid, .download, .stream, .science, .party, .faith and .racing. Some of those endings are seen far less often in ordinary business use than they are elsewhere, and in our experience corporate mail filters give unfamiliar endings a harder time than a .co.uk gets. Test your email deliverability early if you plan to send from it.
Is .trade the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.trade works well if
- You run a trade-only or wholesale arm and want a separate address for the trade counter, distinct from the retail site.
- You are an import, export or customs business whose name is gone on .co.uk, and the word is already how you describe yourself.
- You are building a B2B marketplace and want a short address that reads as commercial without spelling out "wholesale".
Look elsewhere if
- You send a lot of email from it. Unfamiliar endings attract more scrutiny from corporate spam filters than an established .co.uk does.
- Your customers are UK consumers searching locally. A .co.uk carries a geographic signal for those queries and costs a fraction as much.
- The ambiguity bothers you. British readers hear both tradespeople and international commerce in the word, and your address will not settle it.
For a UK trade business selling to UK customers, the .co.uk is cheaper and lands better in inboxes. See .co.uk pricing.
.trade vs .co.uk: which should you register?
On every practical measure a .co.uk is the safer buy for a British trade business. It costs a fraction as much, it is a geographic signal for UK search, every customer recognises it, and it has twenty-five years of goodwill with email filters behind it. Those are not small advantages when your enquiries arrive by search and your quotes arrive by email.
The .trade wins on one thing, which is naming. If the .co.uk you want has gone and the word "trade" is already in how you describe the business, this puts your name back within reach on a short, clean address. Use it as the second domain, keep the .co.uk as the one on the van and the one you send email from, and you get the naming benefit without paying for it in deliverability.
.trade domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .trade domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyBoth, and the registry does not choose for you. Elite Registry describes it as a dedicated space for the online trade sector, which points at commerce between businesses, but British usage of "the trade" for skilled trades is at least as strong and plenty of registrations lean that way. There is no eligibility rule pushing it either way. What that means in practice is that your site has to make the meaning obvious quickly, because the address will not.
Not blocked outright, but they can attract more filtering than a familiar extension does. Corporate mail systems weigh domain reputation, age and history, and an ending they see less often starts with less of all three. The fixes are the ordinary ones: set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC properly, warm the domain gradually and keep your sending clean. Every domain we sell includes free DNS management, so publishing those records costs nothing extra, and we can check them for you.
Elite Registry Limited holds the ICANN agreement, the operating and coordinating functions are provided by Global Registry Services Limited under the GRS Domains brand, and IANA lists GoDaddy Registry as the technical contact. GRS runs sixteen extensions in total, including .win, .bid, .download, .stream, .science and .faith. That is worth knowing because domain reputation systems tend to judge by neighbourhood, and this is the neighbourhood a .trade sits in.
Included with Your .trade 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 .trade domain today
Secure your .trade domain from just £27.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
