How to Register a Domain Name in Australia
Registering a domain takes about four minutes. Deciding what to register, and fixing the settings immediately afterwards, is the part that quietly takes an afternoon.
The mechanics are the same at every registrar. What differs in Australia is the eligibility check on .au names, which asks for a business identifier and a reason the name relates to you. Have that ready and the whole thing is short.
Short answer: To register a domain name in Australia, check it is available, confirm you meet the auDA eligibility rules if you want a .au extension, supply your ABN, ACN, ARBN or Australian trade mark, choose a licence term of one to five years, and pay. A .com.au is $19 a year at GoodHost and is usually working within hours.
What do you need before you register a domain name in Australia?
Three things. A business identifier, which for .au extensions means an ABN, ACN, ARBN or Australian trade mark. A name that relates to your business, your trading name or what you sell. And a contact email address you will still be reading in five years, held somewhere other than the domain itself.
That last one sounds trivial and causes more grief than anything else on the list. If the only contact address on a domain is an address at that domain, and the domain breaks, the recovery email goes into the void with everything else. Use a personal address or one on a different domain.
How do you check whether the name is available?
Type it into a registrar’s domain search, which queries the registry live and returns free or taken in a second or two. Check every extension you might want at the same time, because the .com.au being free tells you nothing about the .com. Search the exact spelling you intend to use.
If the name is taken, look at who holds it before you get creative with hyphens and misspellings. A parked page with no content sometimes means the holder would sell. An active competitor means you should pick something else entirely. The guide to choosing a domain name for an Australian business covers what makes a name worth having in the first place.
Which extension should you register first?
For a business trading in Australia, .com.au is still the default and the one customers assume. Register that first. Add the short .au version and .net.au if the name matters to you, since they are inexpensive and stop somebody standing up a lookalike next to you.
| Extension | Register or renew, per year | Transfer in |
|---|---|---|
| .com.au | $19 | Free |
| .net.au | $19 | Free |
| .org.au | $19 | Free |
| .au | $19 | Free |
| .com | $41 | $41 |
| .net | $43 | $43 |
A .com is worth adding if you sell overseas or expect to. If you trade only in Australia, it is optional, and $41 a year for a name you redirect is a reasonable thing to skip.
What actually happens during registration?
You enter the name, choose a term, then supply the registrant details. For a .au name the identifier is validated against the relevant government register while you wait. Payment follows, the registry creates the licence, and the domain appears in your account ready to have DNS records pointed at something.
- Search the exact name and pick your extensions.
- Choose a licence term. One to five years is available on .au names.
- Enter the registrant entity name and identifier number, spelled exactly as they appear on the government register.
- Enter contact details, using an email address that does not depend on this domain.
- Pay, then wait for the registry confirmation, which is usually quick rather than overnight.
If the identifier fails validation, it is almost always a typo or a mismatch between the entity name you typed and the one on record. The detail on .com.au eligibility rules is worth a read if the rejection is not obvious.
What should you do in the first ten minutes after registering?
Four small jobs, none of which take long, all of which are annoying to fix later. Turn on the registrar lock. Turn on auto-renew, or diarise the expiry. Check the registrant contact email is right. Then point the DNS at wherever the site and email will live, even if that is a holding page.
The DNS step is where a new domain either works or sits there doing nothing. If your hosting is with GoodHost, that means setting the nameservers to the ones in your welcome email. If email is going somewhere separate, the MX records need to point there and not follow the website by accident.
How long before the domain actually works?
A new .au registration is usually resolving within a few hours, and often much sooner than that. There is no queue to join and nothing being pushed around the internet. Resolvers simply have no cached answer for a brand new name, so the first one they get is yours.
The commonly quoted 48 hour figure applies to changes on an existing domain, where old records may still be cached at other resolvers until their TTL expires. Fresh registrations rarely hit that. If you are moving an existing site rather than starting fresh, read how long DNS propagation really takes first, because lowering TTLs beforehand makes the difference.
Pricing for every extension sits on the GoodHost domains page, and the rest of the domain names section of the Knowledge Centre covers renewals, transfers and DNS once the name is live.
Frequently asked questions
Can I register a domain name without building a website yet?
Yes, and it is often the sensible order. Registering early stops somebody else taking the name while you plan, and a domain with no website attached costs nothing beyond the annual fee. Point it at a simple holding page or leave the DNS alone until you are ready to build.
Can I register a domain on behalf of a client or another business?
You can handle the process, but for a .au name the registrant details must be the client’s entity and identifier, not yours. Registering a client’s domain in your own name creates a mess later and can put the eligibility on the wrong entity. Do the work, register it to them.
Is registering a domain the same as buying hosting?
No. Registering a domain gives you the name and control of its DNS. Hosting is the server space where the website files and databases live. You need both for a working site, and they can sit with the same provider or different ones, as long as the DNS points to the right place.
What happens if I forget to renew my domain?
The name stops resolving, which takes your website and often your email with it. There is usually a grace period during which you can renew normally, then a redemption stage that costs considerably more, and finally the name returns to the pool. Auto-renew plus a working contact email address prevents almost all of this.
How many domain names should a small business register?
One is enough to trade. Most businesses end up with two or three: the .com.au they use, plus the matching .au and sometimes the .com, redirected to the main one. Beyond that you are paying annual fees to defend names nobody was going to type anyway.
Have your ABN and a shortlist of three names in front of you, then work down the list on the GoodHost domains page until one comes back free. With the identifier already open in another tab, registering the winner is a two minute job rather than a stop-start one.