We often get asked, “how do I register domain name in Australia?”.

Registering Domain Name

Domains work with or without www.

Picking Domain Name

You start with picking a domain name for your future website. It is best to pick a short domain name that contains at least one of your keywords. These types of websites generally rank better in Google, however it is optional as any SEO guru will make website with almost any domain name rank.

Once you pick your domain name, pick a domain register that allows purchasing .com.au domain names. A reasonable price to pay for a domain name is around $10-$15 per year. With Australian domain names you also have to purchase them for at least 2 years.

Domain Registration Portals

There are many domain registration portals that allows you to buy a domain name. We use a portal called name.com.au which is good on price and provides complimentary domain services. Some of the registers will charge you for additional services like DNS, Forwarding and Privacy. There are many other places where you can buy a domain name, but many of them overcharge.

Just to let you know, there is no such thing as “domain privacy” in Australia. You can look up any Australian domain name and find out the details of the registrant. All you have to do is use a WhoIs service to find this out.

Linking Domains with ABN

When you go through the process of registration, make sure that you register your domain name using your own ABN/ACN. Domain names in Australia must to be linked to a legal entity such as ABN or ACN. Having someone else registering a domain name for you might end up with you having trouble accessing it in the future. A domain name is business’ or person’s intellectual property thus should be registered accordingly.

The email address linked to the domain name has to be accessible by the owner to be able to receive notifications regarding the domain name and to be able to gain access. We often get contacted by business owners who had their website setup a number of years ago, who can’t get a hold of their previous web developer to change something on the website.

Once you have registered a domain name it usually takes 5-10 minutes for the registration to go through. Having said that there can be some cases where it may take up to 24 hours. If this does occur, the best way is to contact the domain register via Live Chat.

Auto Renewing Domain Names

One of the most important things that people often forget is to make sure that “Auto-Renew” is enabled on your domain profile. Some registers don’t have this enabled by default as a result you might find out that in 2 years your domain name has become available for others to register.

Finally, throughout the domain registration process you will find that most registration portals will try to up-sell you on other services. Our advice is to avoid the up-sells and go straight through to the checkout. You can always purchase these services separately, but in most cases you will find that you won’t ever need them.

We hope that you’ve found this post useful. If you have any questions, please use the comments box below.