You may have received an email from Nominet in the past few days, like the one in the image below, and wondered if it’s genuine and safe, and what it’s all about. We can confirm that the email is real. Read more below….

Nominet is the organisation that controls the registration of .uk ending domain names (such as .co.uk, .org.uk, etc). A few years ago Nominet added the simple .uk ending to this collection of endings.

If you already have a .co.uk, .org.uk etc domain name then we will have tried to contact you several times recently to offer you the chance to reserve the simple .uk version to match your equivalent existing domain free for a few years. Nominet called this the Right Of Registration. So, for example, if you had already registered “mydomainname.co.uk” then you would have been offered the chance to reserve the smaller “mydomainname.uk” too. We sent out emails to customers several times, and also shared the information via our news blog, newsletters and social media feeds.

If you didn’t take us up on this offer, then Nominet’s recent email is reminding you that you have until June 20th to register your shorter .uk domain name. After that date, anyone will be able to register it.

Note – your existing domain name is safe. This only affects the new shorter .uk ending domain.

There are several reasons why you might want to register the .uk ending – it’s smaller and more compact, easier to remember, and if you run a business you might want to prevent your competitors getting hold of the plain .uk version. On the other hand if you only use your domain name for personal use, or think it’s unlikely that anyone else would want the simple .uk version, then you might not want to bother.

So what do you need to do? If you want to register your equivalent .uk ending domain, please get in touch with us. We can link the new .uk ending domain to your existing services so that it’ll work seamlessly. Note there is an annual charge now – the free offer is no longer available.

If you DON’T want to register the equivalent .uk ending domain and are happy for it to be available to the general public, then you don’t have to do anything. It’s up to you.

If you have any questions on this, please call our friendly helpdesk on 01381 600580 or email [email protected].