Search for a domain name

A domain name, or simply domain, is similar to a home address in real life. It’s how people find your site online – they enter the domain in a web browser or search engine.

Hostinger.com is a domain, just like Google.com and Facebook.com. Ideally, a domain should be registered under the same name as the brand it’s representing.

It is important to buy domain names to help potential visitors find your site. Without assigned website names, we would only be able to access them by entering their IP address, which is more difficult to remember.

While performing a domain search to look for a good name, you can include keywords or brand names.

The best practices for buying domain names include the following:

Length. Keep it short. Two to three words is ideal.

Simple. Don’t use any lengthy or hard-to-spell words.

Keywords. Include a keyword from your niche. For example, if you sell coffee beans in Seattle, try Seattlecoffeebeans.com.

Avoid numbers. Numbers are hard to remember and make everything more complex.

Brand name. Buy a domain name that includes your brand for maximum recognition.

No, once you register a domain, you cannot change it. However, you can buy another domain name and move your website there.

The minimum registration period for domain names is one year. With Hostinger, you can also register .com, .net, .org, and other domains for up to three years.

If you want to make sure that your domains are always registered to you and keep your website available online all the time, we recommend setting up automatic renewal.

No. The www in front of a URL is not a part of your domain.

If you add www in front of your desired domain in the domain name checker’s field, the final website address will look something like this: www.wwwexample.com. For that reason, you should not add www.

Type your desired name in the domain name search tool to check its availability.

If it’s not taken, you can add it to the cart and purchase the domain. If it is, we will provide other great options.

It’s free to check domain availability and there are no special requirements for buying a domain name. We only require basic contact information and a valid payment method.

You can also buy domains with us and point them to another hosting provider.

Yes. When you buy a domain, it belongs to you – and not the domain registrar.

It is easy to use our domain transfer service to switch to Hostinger. We will walk you through every step of the process.

TLD stands for top-level domain. It is the final component of a domain, like .com.

ccTLD stands for country-code top-level domain. It is a subcategory of TLDs used to identify a particular country – for example, .co.uk, .de, .mx, and .fr are all ccTLDs.

gTLD stands for generic top-level domain. gTLDs are the most common type of domain name, in part because this category includes .com domains, which have more registrations than all ccTLDs combined.

Historically, the main gTLDs were .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, and .mil, but the number of available domain extensions has been expanded with the addition of TLDs like .online, .xyz, and .name.

Hostinger offers instant activation, so you can be sure that your desired domain name will be ready to use straight away.

We’ve made the process as quick as possible – it only takes a couple of minutes to go from checking domain name availability to successfully registering it.

Hostinger offers the best way to get a great domain for free. You just need to sign up for a Premium or Business web hosting plan for 12 months or more, and you’ll get a free domain registration for one year.

Learn how to claim your free domain.

If the website name has already been registered, you can try another extension. Often, the most popular extensions are already taken, but country-specific extensions such as .co.uk, or less common ones like .xyz or .online might still be available. Our domain search tool will also suggest other great available options.

Privacy protection is sometimes called WHOIS protection because it hides certain information about a domain name’s owner that would otherwise be discoverable through a WHOIS lookup.

Privacy protection lets the domain registrar replace your name, address, phone number, email address, and business name with a set of generic, non-identifiable information.

Each gTLD carries a slightly different meaning, so it’s usually best to pick one that’s most relevant to your website.

Domain names ending in .com are commonly used for commercial purposes, although they’re becoming the default option as they imply a certain amount of trust. .net domains were originally used by networking companies, such as internet service providers, but are now multipurpose.

Domains ending in .org are still largely used as originally intended – as the gTLD for charities, communities, and local organizations. Meanwhile, .info is aimed at information-based websites such as wikis and tutorial sites.

With all of these gTLDs, there's a certain amount of wiggle room. There’s no rule saying you have to use one type of TLD or another. Think of the above information as guidelines when purchasing a domain name that is most relevant to your website.

Think of your domain name as your home address and web hosting as the physical structure, like the house. A domain can help people find your site; hosting is the online space to store your website data. To publish a website, you'll need to buy domain and hosting services so that visitors have an easier time finding your site on the internet.

While it’s technically possible to have one without the other, they work best together. This is why many hosting companies offer domain names and many domain registrars offer hosting services.