Domain Names
Part of the GoodHost Knowledge Centre.
Your domain is the one piece of the setup that is genuinely yours, and the one piece nobody can hand back to you if you lose it. Which is why the rules around a com.au domain deserve more attention than they usually get. Australia does not run an open registry. You have to qualify to hold the name, and you have to keep qualifying the whole time you hold it.
auDA sets that test. It accepts an ABN, an ACN, an ARBN for a foreign company, or an Australian trade mark or trade mark application. The name itself has to relate to the entity behind it: your business or personal name, an acronym of it, a match with the trade mark, or a match or synonym for what you sell or do. Licences run in terms of one, two, three, four or five years.
Everything after eligibility is practical work. Registering, transferring in, changing nameservers, working out why yesterday’s change still is not showing, and picking between .au direct and .com.au when both are free. If you are still at the naming stage, the guide to choosing a name is the sensible first stop, and the propagation guide explains the delay everyone panics about.
What do you actually own when you register a domain?
You licence it rather than buy it outright. Registration gives you exclusive use for a term you choose, renewable indefinitely, for as long as you keep meeting the registry’s rules. For .com.au that eligibility has to hold at registration and for the entire time you keep the name, not just on the day you paid.
How do a domain, hosting and email fit together?
The domain is the address. Hosting is the building it points at. Email is a separate service the same address can point somewhere else entirely. DNS records are the joins between them, which is exactly why you can register a name with one company, host the website with a second and run mailboxes through a third.
Why do domain changes take time to appear?
Nothing is pushed anywhere, despite how the word propagation sounds. Each DNS record carries a TTL telling resolvers how long to cache it, so a change stays invisible to anyone holding a fresh copy until that copy expires. Most .au changes show up within a few hours; 48 hours is the quoted worst case.
GoodHost registers and renews .com.au, .net.au, .org.au and .au at $19 per year, with .com at $41 and .net at $43. Transfers of the Australian extensions come in at no transfer charge, and .com or .net transfers are $41 and $43 respectively. You can check whether a name is still free on the domains page. For everything that happens after the name is yours, the Knowledge Centre covers hosting, WordPress, email and security.