Choosing a domain name: .co.uk, .com and what to avoid

The name outlives everything else it is attached to

A domain name is the one part of a business that touches everything. It is painted on the van, printed on the invoices, sitting after the at sign in every email address, and on the sign above the door if there is one. Staff change, vans get resprayed, premises move. The name carries on, and getting it right is a cheap morning and a ten-year decision.

That is the case for doing it deliberately rather than in a hurry. The choice itself costs an hour of thinking and a few pounds a year. Reversing it later means new email addresses on everything, reprinting the lot, and links and search rankings that do not survive the move. So the work divides into four short questions: which extension, which name, which checks before paying, and who ends up on the registration record. None of them is difficult. All of them are cheaper to answer now than later.

.co.uk, .com, .uk or something else

For most UK businesses the right answer is a name ending in .co.uk. That is the official line as well as the habit. Northern Ireland's government business guidance describes a .co.uk name as suitable for most UK-based businesses, with availability checked through Nominet, the registry for .uk names, and registration handled by any registration agent for a small annual fee.

The .com earns its place when the business sells internationally from day one. Duport's checklist for UK small businesses puts the default plainly: .co.uk for UK trading, .com when selling abroad is the plan from the start, and the other one held alongside as a secondary registration where it is available. At the prices below, holding both is cheap insurance.

The newer extensions are a different story. Duport's checklist advises avoiding .biz, .info, .online and their relatives, which are associated with low quality sites, and a customer who has never heard of your business will at least have seen .co.uk before. They may never have seen the alternative at all.

One piece of advice still doing the rounds stopped being true in 2019. When the shorter .uk names launched on 10 June 2014, existing .co.uk owners were given a five-year right of registration to their matching .uk name. That reservation window closed on 25 June 2019, and from 1 July 2019 the unclaimed names were released to the general public, first come first served. Nominet's FAQ on reserved .uk rights carries the dates. So an older article telling you that your matching .uk is reserved for you is describing a scheme that ended years ago: if you want the .uk version of your name today, check it and buy it the same as anybody else.

Short, speakable, spellable: the phone-call test

Keyword tools do not test a domain name. A phone call does. Say the name once, down a bad line, to somebody who has never heard it, and ask them to type it into their phone from memory. That is precisely what a customer does when a neighbour recommends you and the van is nowhere in sight.

Everything the checklists say about length, hyphens and numbers serves that test. Duport's checklist suggests staying under about 15 characters and saying the name aloud before committing. Hyphens cause trouble twice over: they are awkward to say down a phone, and they raise the spam score a name carries when it sends email, on the receiving mail servers. Numbers cause the "1 or one" confusion, unless the brand genuinely contains a number and there is no way around it.

A name that survives the phone call is short, carries no hyphens or numbers to explain, and spells the way it sounds. Everything else about a domain is negotiable. This part is not.

Three checks before you pay

The checks are free, and they are worth running before the money moves rather than after.

First, the trademark register. The UK trade mark register can be searched free on GOV.UK, by keyword, owner or number, through the Intellectual Property Office's search for a trade mark. A clash matters more than it might look: a trademark holder can complain through Nominet's dispute resolution service, and if an independent expert finds that the domain's registration or use takes unfair advantage of their rights, it is transferred to them. Registering first is not a complete defence on its own, so the free search is far cheaper than finding out the hard way.

Second, Companies House, for the name itself. The government's naming guidance for UK businesses advises keeping clear of names close to other brands, and checking the trademark register and Companies House before settling on one. A name that collides with a registered company has to be changed, which means reprinting everything it is on.

Third, the extensions you intend to hold. Decide now whether you are buying the .co.uk alone or the .com alongside it, and check each one's availability through Nominet's own search or by asking the registrar. Official guidance also suggests having alternative names ready before you commit, which costs nothing but a few minutes of thinking on the way.

Where to register it, and in whose name

The second half of the decision is not what the name says. It is where it is registered, and in whose name. Neither question appears on the first page of most guides, and both matter more than the name itself once a few years have passed.

The consistent advice is to register at an independent UK registrar rather than inside a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace. A builder's bundled domain can look cheaper on day one, free for the first year and around £12 to £15 a year to renew after, against roughly £8 to £15 a year for a .co.uk at an independent registrar. The real difference shows up later: a domain bundled inside a builder account is harder to move, and the difficulty typically surfaces a year or two in, exactly when the business is too busy to deal with it.

Then there is the name on the record. Register the domain to the business from day one, not to whoever happened to be typing at the time, and not left sitting inside somebody else's account. That record is what decides who controls the name if a relationship with a designer, a builder or a host ever ends badly. Choosing the name is half the decision and whose name it ends up in is the other half, and who owns your domain name (and how to check) covers that other half in full, including the fact that a WHOIS search answers nothing here: for a .co.uk or .uk domain, Nominet does not publish the registrant's name or address on a public WHOIS search without the registrant's explicit consent, so a blank result proves nothing either way.

If you have already chosen the builder route, none of this is closed to you. The name can still be registered separately and connected to the site, and what that route costs in the long run, along with what a later move salvages and what it does not, is the subject of Wix vs a web designer, written from the other end of the same decision.

The letters that arrive afterwards

Register a domain and there is a fair chance that letters start to arrive. Not from the registrar. Domain owners have reported letters from senders such as the Domain Renewal Group and UK Domains, arriving months before the domain is actually due, claiming the name is about to expire and may be lost.

The reason these letters work is that genuine renewal notices genuinely do arrive, and a busy owner cannot always tell the difference at a glance. Nominet sends renewal notices to the registrant directly, or indirectly through the registrar or hosting company when the domain is managed by one, and that indirect route is the one misleading companies have exploited.

Nominet's own rules for companies sending renewal notices are specific. They must not state that the domain will be cancelled, suspended or discontinued unless the recipient pays them, and they must make clear before any payment that they are not Nominet and that the domain may be renewable directly. A letter that does neither is not a renewal notice, whatever the envelope says.

The check that settles any letter needs nobody else: find the real expiry date from the registrar's account, or ask whoever manages the domain for you, and ignore the date printed on the letter. Dots and Spaces, a UK domain industry blog that tracks this scam, notes that a genuine Nominet renewal notice arrives 21 days before expiry, a useful figure, though the reliable habit is to trust the registrar's record rather than any letter's arithmetic. Suspicious correspondence can be reported to Action Fraud, the national fraud reporting service.

What changing it later costs

All of which is why the decision is worth an unhurried hour now. Change the domain in three years and the bill arrives in four parts: the email addresses change, the printed marketing changes, the search rankings reset and the inbound links go dead. Duport's checklist puts those four in one line, and the line reads short for what it costs, which is reprints, a new address on every invoice and every business card, and years of accumulated links pointing at a name that no longer answers.

The mechanics of a move are slower than people expect as well. For a .com, ICANN's rules lock the domain against transfer to a new registrar for 60 days after a change of registrant, unless the registrar lets you opt out when the change is made. Authorisation codes for .com, .net and .org are generated on demand and valid for at most 14 calendar days, so the paperwork has to line up with the clock. A .co.uk moves differently, using an IPS tag rather than an auth code. All of it is doable, and none of it is free.

None of this means a name can never be changed. Businesses rebrand, and domains move every day without incident. It means the change is a project with real costs, and every one of those costs disappears if the name is chosen properly the first time round.

What to do next

If the business already exists and the domain is bought, run the three checks anyway and read the next renewal letter with more suspicion than the last one. If the name has not been bought yet, it is an hour's work: pick something short that survives the phone call, check the trademark register and Companies House, buy the .co.uk at an independent registrar in the business's own name, and add the .com alongside it if it is available.

This is the arrangement already in place for every site built here. The website plan is £49 a month including VAT, or £490 a year with two months free, and includes your domain and business email, renewal included. The domain, the content and the accounts stay in the client's name throughout, and moving an existing domain costs nothing. The services page sets out what a build includes, and pricing has the plans in full.

The questions that come up

Should I buy both the .co.uk and the .com version of my domain? If both are available, holding the second is cheap insurance, and Duport's checklist treats the .com as a good secondary registration for a UK business. Buy the one you will actually use first, and add the other while it is still available.

How much does a domain name cost in the UK? Roughly £8 to £15 a year for a .co.uk at an independent registrar, against a website builder's bundled domain that can be free for the first year and around £12 to £15 a year to renew. The first year's headline price is not the number to compare, the renewal is.

Do hyphens or numbers in a domain name matter? Hyphens cause trouble when the name is spoken and raise the spam score of email sent from the domain on the receiving mail servers. Numbers cause the "1 or one" confusion unless the brand genuinely contains one. Both are avoidable at the choosing stage, which is the cheapest possible time to avoid them.

Should I buy my domain through my website builder? You can, and it will work. The case against is what happens later: a domain bundled inside a builder account is harder to move, and the difficulty typically surfaces a year or two in. An independent registrar keeps the name reachable no matter what the website runs on.

Can someone take my domain name if it clashes with a trademark? A trademark holder can complain through Nominet's dispute resolution service, and if an independent expert finds the registration or its use takes unfair advantage of their rights, the domain is transferred to them, even where it was registered first. This is why the free trademark search on GOV.UK is worth running before you pay, not after.

Can I change my domain name later? You can, and it is a project rather than a switch: the email addresses change, the printed marketing changes, search rankings reset and inbound links go dead. For a .com there is also a 60 day transfer lock after a change of registrant under ICANN's rules, unless your registrar lets you opt out. Possible, in other words, but not free.

What is the difference between .uk and .co.uk? .co.uk is the traditional UK commercial extension, and official guidance describes it as suitable for most UK-based businesses. The shorter .uk launched on 10 June 2014, first with a five-year reservation for existing .co.uk owners, and open to everybody since 1 July 2019. Duport's checklist makes .uk a good secondary registration, with .co.uk the default for UK trading.

Is my matching .uk domain reserved for me? Almost certainly not any more. The five-year reservation for existing .co.uk owners ended on 25 June 2019, and from 1 July 2019 the unclaimed names were released first come first served. If you want it, check it and buy it like anybody else.