About .uk domains

The .uk country-code top-level domain name (ccTLD) is an extension that represents the United Kingdom. The information below applies to the following country-code second-level domain names (ccSLDs) that we offer at this time:

LAUNCHING 6/10: .uk - Intended for everyone
A registrant who purchased any of the domain extensions below before Oct. 29, 2013 has the first rights to reserve and purchase the corresponding .uk domain. The .uk is automatically held for them until 2019, as long as they retain the original domain. Even if a domain search shows the .uk as available, it will reject the registration if someone else owns the .co.uk, .org.uk, etc. Registrant information for the .uk has to match exactly, and is case sensitive. For more information about Right to Reserve, see Right to Reserve guidelines for .uk domains

• .co.uk - Intended for commercial entities
• .me.uk - Intended for private individuals
• .org.uk - Intended for non-profit organizations

Note: If you've lost your Nominet login credentials, you can retrieve that information from Nominet using the email address with which you registered your domain.

Domain names can be up to 63 characters, with a minimum of three characters, and can contain letters (a to z), numbers (0 to 9), and hyphens (except at the beginning or end of the domain name). You cannot register domain names with special characters such as & and #.

Features	Availability
Who can register?	Details below1
Registration length	1 - 10 years
Renewal length	1 - 10 years
Renewal restrictions	Details below2
Transfers to HostingDude.com	Supported (details below)3.
Transfers away	Supported (details below)4
Private registration	Details below5
Protected registration	Not supported
Backorders	Not supported
Bulk registration	Supported
Account change	Supported (details below)6
Contact updates	Supported (details below)7
IDNs	Not supported
Nameserver requirements	Details below8
Expiration/redemption	Please contact customer support
Domain cancellations	See below9
Registry	Nominet

Customer Support

Note: HostingDude.com provides live 24/7/365 telephone customer support for all inquiries, incidents, and issues. Most all are addressed during the call itself by our award-winning customer support team. When escalation is required, the majority of issues are resolved within 72 hours, but exceptions do occur depending on the complexity of the issue. Should you wish to escalate an issue, please ask our customer support team to do so on your behalf.

Details

¹ Registration requirements

Anyone can register .uk domain names on a first-come, first-served basis, but an address for service in the United Kingdom will be required for registrants who live overseas. This address must be listed as the admin contact for your domain name. This requirement does not apply for .co.uk and .org.uk domain names.

PO Boxes are not acceptable.

For more information, see the registration rules for the new .uk domain extensions.

² Renewal restrictions

Your .uk domain name renews before its expiration date. We attempt auto-renewal 15 days prior to the domain name's expiration date. If the renewal attempt fails, we re-attempt renewal 8 days prior to the domain name's expiration date and again on the domain name's actual expiration date.

If we cannot auto-renew the domain name and you do not manually renew it before the third billing attempt, it becomes unmanageable in your account until it is renewed.

³ Transfers In requirements

The .uk transfer process is unique to the Nominet registry.

To initiate a .uk transfer, you must:

1. If available on our website, purchase a .uk transfer for $0.

   Note: The .uk transfer does not include a free one-year extension because the transfer is free.

2. Contact your current registrar and request an IPS tag change to WILDWEST. Once updated, the transfer completes immediately.

When you complete either of the steps above, we will send an email to the registrant contact's email or to the account holder's email address. You must follow the instructions listed in the email to initiate a .uk transfer.

Note: .uk transfers can sometimes take several days to complete.

⁴ Transfers out requirements

To transfer a .uk domain name to another registrar, contact our support team to request the transfer and provide us with the following:

1. A specific request to transfer the domain name. Include the full domain name in the request.
2. The IPS Tag name of your new registrar.

   Note: Nominet issues a case-sensitive IPS tag to each registrar approved to manage .uk domain names. Transferring a .uk domain name requires an update of the IPS tag information.

3. Account validation information (customer account number or user name and your Support PIN).

⁵ Private Registration details

Private registration is currently available for the co.uk, org.uk and me.uk extensions of the .uk domain, but the privacy address shown on the account will be a US address.

⁶ Account change requirements

When you move a domain name, you cannot change the registrant first name, last name, and company name.

Note: You will need to cancel Private Registration prior to a change of account.

⁷ Contact updates requirements

For registrant contact information, first update through Nominet. After your new information displays in the Nominet Whois database, contact our support team to update your contact information with us.

With .uk domain names, the type of contact update you want to make might include a fee. See Nominet's Transfer page for information on free vs. fee-based changes.

Note: During the verification process, the domain name request is assigned a status code of 254 (".UK Data Validation Process"). For more specific instructions regarding the .uk contact verification process, please see Verifying Contact Information for .UK Data Validation Process.

⁸ Nameservers requirements

Nameserver features	Details
IPv4	Supported
IPv6	Supported
DNSSEC	Supported
Minimum # of nameservers	0
Maximum # of nameservers	10

Only one IPv4 address is allowed per host and also only one IPv6 address. It is however possible to assign an IPv4 and an additional IPv6 address to a single host.

We support DNSSEC for .uk, .co.uk, .me.uk, and .org.uk domain names.

see Manage DNSSEC for my domain for information on enabling DNSSEC for your .uk, .co.uk, .me.uk, and .org.uk domain names and About Self-Managed DNSSEC for information on the digital signature (DS) fields required for it. You can configure a maximum of ten DS records for your domain names.

Note: You can contact us at ukverify@secureserver.net if you have further questions or concerns about .uk domains.

Nameserver updates can take up to 5 days to complete.

⁹ Domain cancellations

Per Nominet requirement, only the registrant can cancel the .UK domain name. You should only cancel a .UK domain if you are sure that you no longer need it. Once you submit the request it cannot be reversed. Once submitted for cancellation, the .UK domain will be removed from the registry on the day of cancellation at some point before midnight. At this point, the .UK domain name will be available for anyone to register. To submit a cancellation request please log into Online Services.

Next step

• Right to Reserve guidelines for .uk domains