.io Domain Names
.io domain names, registered properly
Officially this is the country code of the British Indian Ocean Territory. What happened instead was that a whole generation of startups, developer tools and APIs adopted it as their house ending. Register from $39.99/yr, and the renewal figure appears on screen before payment.
.io
Extension
Shown
Renewal before checkout
Live
Availability results
Free
DNS management
The Extension
Why .io?
Hardly any ending has been repurposed this completely. An obscure ccTLD at the outset, .io became the house style of software: short, easy on the tongue, and reading as input/output to anyone who has ever written a line of code. Search engines handle it as effectively generic rather than pinned to a territory, and in front of developers it calls for no explanation at all. Popularity of that order comes with a bill. Short names worth having get fought over, so a free one today is a name to take today.
Because a country code is no ICANN gTLD, the .io registry sets its own policy, and in a handful of places the small print diverges from .com. Knowing that is useful. Fearing it is not, and this is exactly the sort of thing a registrar should set out before you hang a brand off the name. On our side: the registrant line carries you, what it costs to keep sits beside what it costs to take, and the delegation is yours to aim anywhere you please.
Good Fit
.io works best for
- Startups, SaaS products and developer tools
- APIs, documentation and engineering blogs
- Software brands whose audience lives all day inside editors and terminals
- A short, sticky name for cases where the .com went years back
With Every Name
Included with every domain
Fluent in ccTLD small print
Every country code answers to a rulebook its own registry wrote. Put the question to us before you build anything: how does .io deal with a transfer, a dispute, a change of contact? You will get a straight answer back.
The renewal, before the romance
Fashionable endings tempt buyers into registering first and working the budget out afterwards. On every search result we run, the rate for keeping it stands right next to the rate for taking it.
Delegation without strings
Point the name at our nameservers, at your cloud provider's, or at somebody else's entirely. Whichever way you go, the registration itself does not move off you.
Common Questions
Questions about .io
Does a .io hurt my rankings anywhere outside the software crowd?
No. For years now search engines have read .io as effectively generic, so nothing about it ties your site to a territory or pulls a ranking down. Where the real question lives is human. Shoppers outside tech recognise it less readily than .com, and that is why brands selling well beyond software usually hold the .com as well and redirect it across.
In what way does a .io transfer differ from a .com?
Steps that will look familiar: take the lock off, collect the transfer code, approve it at the receiving registrar. Timing and confirmations, though, run to the .io registry's own policy instead of the ICANN gTLD rulebook. Start any move a good while before expiry, as you would on any ending, and keep the registrant mailbox alive, since that is where every confirmation lands.
Is a country code safe ground for a brand built to last decades?
Tens of thousands of funded companies have already done it. Now the sober version: ccTLD policy belongs to the registry and is subject to change, which holds to some degree for every ending that exists. Get the record put in your name. Leave renewals running automatically, and where the brand is mission-critical, keep a classic sibling such as the .com as a hedge. That is the same counsel we offer on every fashionable ending, this one very much included.
Keep Browsing
Other endings worth a look
Registration and renewal figures for every ending we carry are on the price list.
Read the whole domain price list or transfer a name you already hold.
Put the .io on the register before someone else does.
Search runs live against the registry, WHOIS privacy costs nothing where the registry allows it, and the renewal figure is shown before you pay.
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