.za.com Domain
South African Identity, Global Registration
Register your .za.com domain from just £171.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
This domain has registration restrictions
Anyone worldwide may register, but acceptance is at CentralNic's sole discretion and its reserved-word list is not published. Read the full eligibility rules.
What is a .za.com domain?
The .za.com domain combines South African geographic identity with worldwide accessibility. Operated by CentralNic, it sits under .com rather than under .za, so it registers like any other .com name. Neither .za.com nor .co.za asks for South African residency, so the reason to look at .za.com is availability rather than eligibility. South Africa has over 40 million internet users and is the continent's most developed digital economy. For international businesses targeting South African consumers, .za.com offers South African branding when the .co.za you wanted has gone. Check the .co.za first: it is the address South African customers expect, and it costs far less.
Who should register .za.com?
International businesses targeting South Africa, UK exporters to the South African market, and brands whose preferred .co.za name has already gone.
Why choose .za.com?
- Recognisable South African identity, registered like a .com
- South Africa has 40+ million internet users
- Open to worldwide registration via CentralNic
- Worth a look when the .co.za name you want is taken
Who runs .za.com, and since when
Registry data from the .za.com 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)
- Registered under the .com zone
- Registry operator
- CentralNic (Team Internet)
- Sold beneath the .com zone, which VeriSign Global Registry Services runs
- .com delegated
- 1985
- The date belongs to the .com zone, not to .za.com itself
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide; no South African residency or presence is required
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £171.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Why .za.com is a third level inside .com
Read yourname.za.com from the right and the structure gives itself away. The zone in the root is .com, run by Verisign since 1985. Inside it sits one ordinary registration, za.com, held by CentralNic. What you buy is a label at the third level inside that. It resolves, it takes DNS records, it carries email and a TLS certificate exactly like anything else. What it is not is a top-level domain, whatever a price list calls it.
CentralNic's registration terms repay a read before you order. Acceptance is at the registry's sole discretion, and it may refuse a name that is on its reserved-word list, which the terms say is not available for public scrutiny, or one it considers obscene or otherwise unsuitable. Registration runs one to ten years, your details go into CentralNic's WHOIS unless you opt out, and once the name is on the database no refund is payable.
Then there is the money. At £171.99 a year this is around nine times what a .co.za costs, and the .co.za is the address South Africans actually recognise. Be sure the South African look is worth that gap every year, because you will pay it every year.
Who is allowed to register .za.com?
Anyone worldwide may register, but acceptance is at CentralNic's sole discretion and its reserved-word list is not published.
- Who may register
- There is no South African residency, citizenship or trading test. That absence is the product: the suffix sells a South African look to registrants who are not in South Africa.
- Names the registry can refuse
- CentralNic may decline an application if the name is already registered, is on its list of reserved words, or is obscene or otherwise unsuitable in its sole discretion. The terms state that the reserved-word list is not available for public scrutiny, so there is no way to check a name against it in advance.
- You warrant your right to the name
- By applying you warrant that you have the right to use the name forming the prefix. CentralNic reserves the right to cancel the registration immediately and without notice where it reasonably believes that warranty was breached or the name was registered to defraud somebody.
- No refunds, at this price
- Once the name and your details are on the CentralNic database no refund is payable, and the terms say fees are non-refundable in whole or in part even if the registration is later suspended, cancelled or transferred. On a name costing this much a year, that is a real amount of money to leave on the table for a typo.
Rules taken from the CentralNic Registry terms and conditions. Registry policy can change, so check before you buy if the answer matters to you.
Not sure whether you qualify? Ask us before you order and we will check the registry rules with you. We would rather answer the question than take an order the registry will refuse.
Is .za.com the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.za.com works well if
- The .co.za you wanted has gone, the exact word matters more to you than the suffix, and za.com is the closest thing still available.
- You want a South African face for a business with no entity or staff there, and you have budgeted for a name that costs several times a normal registration.
- You already hold the name across a spread of suffixes defensively and want this one closed off before somebody else takes it.
Look elsewhere if
- Price. This costs roughly nine times a .co.za, every year, and nothing about the service behind it is nine times better.
- You want a South African signal in search. Google sees a .com here, because that is what it is, so it carries no country target whatsoever.
- You want it to sound official. Saying "za dot com" down a phone invites the question of why it is not just .co.za, and you will answer that more than once.
Selling into South Africa? The country's own extension has no residency test in the published registry policies and costs a fraction of this. See .co.za pricing.
.za.com vs .co.za: which should you register?
These two sell the same idea and only one of them is South African. A .co.za sits under the country's own ccTLD, is operated by the ZA Registry Consortium under ZADNA, the statutory .ZA regulator, and its published policies and procedures set out no residency or local presence condition for registrants. A .za.com is a private label inside somebody else's .com, run by a commercial registry operator in the UK.
The price gap makes the argument for you: roughly nine times more for the version that is not the real thing. The case for za.com is narrow, and it is availability. If the .co.za has gone and the word matters more than the suffix, za.com keeps the word. Otherwise register the .co.za and spend the difference on the website.
.za.com domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .za.com domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. .co.za is South Africa's own second-level domain, operated by the ZA Registry Consortium under ZADNA, the country's statutory .ZA regulator. .za.com is a third-level label inside za.com, an ordinary .com registration held by CentralNic. Both work identically in a browser and both take the same DNS records. Only one of them belongs to the South African namespace, and only one of them is what a South African customer expects a South African business to be using.
Because the registry prices it that way, not because it does more. At £171.99 a year it costs roughly nine times a .co.za, and the technical service behind it is a DNS zone like any other. What you are paying for is the appearance of a South African address without the South African connection, plus scarcity, because there is only one za.com and one company controls what happens inside it. If budget is the deciding factor, that is the whole answer.
Because most lookup tools use RDAP, and RDAP cannot see it. IANA's bootstrap registry lists top-level domains only, so a standards-compliant lookup for anything.za.com falls back to Verisign, and Verisign has no record of a third-level label. The registration data lives on CentralNic's classic WHOIS server on port 43 instead. Our own WHOIS lookup tool queries that server directly for this suffix, which is why it returns a result where several better-known tools report nothing found.
Included with Your .za.com 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 .za.com domain today
Secure your .za.com domain from just £171.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
