.auction Domain
Your Bidding Platform Starts Here
Register your .auction domain from just £33.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included with every domain.
What is a .auction domain?
The .auction domain is purpose-built for auctioneers, online bidding platforms, and liquidation services. It tells buyers they're arriving at a site where they can compete for goods, not just browse a catalogue. From antique house sales to surplus stock clearance, .auction puts the format front and centre.
Who should register .auction?
Auction houses, online bidding platforms, liquidation firms, and estate clearance companies.
Why choose .auction?
- Communicates the buying format instantly
- Ideal for both physical and online auctions
- Attracts bargain-hunting buyers
- Short and recognisable
Who runs .auction, and since when
Registry data from the .auction delegation record held by IANA, which maintains the internet's root zone. Eligibility comes from the registry's own policy, and the prices are ours.
- Extension type
- Generic (gTLD)
- Registry operator
- Dog Beach, LLC
- The organisation that runs the extension
- In the root zone since
- 2014
- Delegated 24 April 2014
- Who can register
- Open to anyone worldwide, with no auctioneer licence or trade body membership
- Checked against the registry's own policy
- Our price
- £33.99 a year
- Ex VAT. Renews at the same price
Running your own bidding platform on .auction
Most bidding in Britain happens on somebody else's platform, and that is the first thing to settle. If you list lots on a marketplace and take the buyers it sends you, an address of your own changes very little. If you run your own sale, take your own bids and settle your own invoices, the address is the first thing a stranger judges before any money moves.
That is where .auction domains earn their keep. The word names the business rather than a mood, which is unusual in this part of the catalogue. Nobody has to guess what happens on the other side of the link. It reads correctly in a saleroom catalogue, on a lot label, in a text message and across the bottom of a rostrum.
Trust is the harder half. A bidder is handing card details to a site they may have found an hour ago, and an unfamiliar ending is one more reason to pause. What sits behind the extension does help. Identity Digital's acceptable use policy, effective 12 February 2026, covers phishing, fraud, malware and impersonation across every extension it operates, and reserves the registry the right to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect or transfer a registration at its own discretion. The Uniform Rapid Suspension System, which ICANN requires on every extension from the 2012 application round, gives trademark owners a quicker route than a full dispute case.
The extension was delegated on 24 April 2014 and is operated by Dog Beach, LLC through Identity Digital. It costs £33.99 a year here against £9.99 for a .co.uk. What it will not do is bring you bidders. Those still come from the aggregator sites your buyers already watch, from your own mailing list, and from the reputation of the saleroom.
Is .auction the right choice for you?
We would rather sell you the right extension once than the wrong one twice.
.auction works well if
- You run your own timed or live online bidding rather than listing through a marketplace, so the sale format is the product.
- You are an asset disposal, liquidation or plant and machinery specialist, where buyers expect a bidding process and search for one.
- You want a campaign address for a charity or fundraising auction that stands apart from the organisation's main website.
- Your saleroom name is already taken on .com and .co.uk, and adding the word auction to the front makes an unwieldy address.
Look elsewhere if
- Most of your lots sell at a fixed price or through a marketplace listing. The address then describes a format your buyers never see.
- You are asking for card details from people who do not know you. An unfamiliar ending is friction at exactly the wrong moment.
- It costs more than three times a .co.uk each year, and a saleroom trading only in one county gets no local search benefit from it.
Selling to buyers within one region and relying on local search? The .co.uk is the address to own first. See .co.uk pricing.
.auction vs .com: which should you register?
The trade-off here is description against familiarity. A .auction address states the format before anyone clicks, which is worth something when the format is the reason people come. A .com states nothing and needs no explanation, which is worth something when you are asking for payment details.
Pick .auction when bidding is what you do rather than one of several ways you sell, when your saleroom name is long and the extension can shorten it, or when you want a separate address for a one-off sale. Pick .com when your buyers are international, when they will be typing the address from memory, or when you would rather spend the difference on the photography that actually sells lots.
We also list .bid at a lower price, which is shorter and says much the same thing. It is worth a look if the .auction name you want has gone, though .auction is the word a British buyer would say out loud.
| .auction | .com | |
|---|---|---|
| What it states | The selling format | Nothing |
| In the root zone since | 2014 | 1985 |
| Familiar to buyers | Less so | Completely |
| Annual cost here | Around £34 | Around £15 |
| Registry | Dog Beach, LLC | Verisign |
.auction domain questions, answered
What people ask us before registering a .auction domain.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Ask us directlyNo. The registry publishes no eligibility policy for this extension, so there is no licence to produce, no trade body to join and no evidence of any kind to supply. Anyone anywhere may register one. That cuts both ways: it means you can order today without paperwork, and it means the address on its own tells a bidder nothing about whether the person behind it is regulated, insured or bonded. Your terms and your company details still have to do that work.
Yes. Identity Digital's acceptable use policy, effective 12 February 2026, applies across every extension it runs and reserves the registry the right to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect or transfer any registration at its sole discretion. The conduct it targets is abuse: phishing, malware, fraud, impersonation and similar. A properly run saleroom has nothing to fear from it, but anybody planning to be casual about how bids are represented or how buyers are charged should read the policy first.
They solve different problems. A marketplace brings you bidders you would never have reached and takes a cut for doing it. Your own .auction site keeps the margin and the customer relationship, but you have to find every bidder yourself. Most salerooms do both, running their own site as the shop window and the record of past results, while still feeding lots to the aggregators. The domain is part of the first job and does nothing at all for the second.
On its own, no. Trust comes from a valid certificate on every page, a real trading address and company number, terms that state how bids are binding and what the buyer's premium is, clear photographs, and a history of completed sales people can look at. The extension describes what you do. It is not evidence that you do it well, and a bidder about to commit several thousand pounds will be looking for the evidence rather than the ending.
Included with Your .auction Domain
DNS Management
Full DNS zone editor to manage A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and all record types.
Email Forwarding
Set up professional email addresses and forward to any inbox.
Auto-Renewal
Never lose your domain with automatic renewal protection.
Free 10GB Mailbox
One 10GB mailbox (POP3/IMAP) included with every domain, on any TLD.
Other E-Commerce Domains Extensions
Register your .auction domain today
Secure your .auction domain from just £33.99/yr. Free DNS management, email forwarding, and 10GB mailbox included.
