Why do we advise you to use a .co.uk domain name?

Most domain names (used for web and email addresses) look like example.co.uk or example.com The .com and .uk part of the name is called a TLD (top level domain name) there are hundreds of other TLDs but those two (and a handful of other country-name TLDs like .de for Germany account for the vast majority of names.

Users are familiar with .co.uk and .com and will rightly be wary of less familiar variants.  In addition the cost of .co.uk and .com is low and is subject to constraints to prevent the price changing significantly.

Names in some other TLDs are offered for a low introductory price but renewals are much higher, indeed some cost £thousands per year and some have been withdrawn because they didn’t generate enough income.  If you had a successful site using a now withdrawn name, you’ve got a problem! Similarly when UK left the EU right of British organisations to continue to use their existing .eu names was withdrawn.

If your surname was (weirdly!) “Tesco” obviously someone else is already using tesco.co.uk so you may think “no problem just get a variant using a different TLD”. At time of writing tesco.name was available (.name is a TLD and is not expensive, initially at least) but you’d better be very careful how you use it if you don’t want to hear from lawyers representing a better known tesco.

.com domains are globally recognised and if you can secure an appropriate one, that’s good.  The annual renewal fee is only a little higher, the problem you might face is that whereas there are about 10million .co.uk names registered there are more like 100 million .com names so it’s harder to find an appropriate one.  If you are addressing a global target audience there is a slight preference for .com but .co.uk is very well known.  If your audience is primarily in the uk they will be more comfortable with a .co.uk name.

We can use any name you wish but we will need to charge the appropriate annual renewal fee which will usually be higher than .co.uk

It’s now possible to buy uk names without the .co element (example.uk)  That’s called a Bare .UK name and is the subject of another article here.

Many names have been bought but are not in use.  Most of those are available for sale but prices for the most desirable names range into the £millions.  The most valuable names are short, relevant, single dictionary words and proper nouns.