South West eCommerce

On 1 July 2002 the regulations for registering a .com.au domain were significantly relaxed. They are now much easier to get, and cheaper too.

The Australian internet domain name system provides a wide range of extensions such as .biz and .info, but the .com.au extension still provides the most recognisable type of domain name for the normal Australian business.

Prior to 1 July 2002, a business could only obtain a particular .com.au name if they had a legal right to that name through, for example, a registered company or business name. Not only that, but it had to be an exact match of your business name. For example, if you had a business registered under the name Bob's Panel Beating, you would have been able to get a name such as www.bobspanelbeating.com.au, but not, for example, www.panelbeatingshop.com.au or www.car-repairs.com.au because those names contained words that were not in your business name.

Once you passed the stringent guidelines, the cost was about $140.00 for two years.

Since 1 July 2002, the main difference is that although you still need to be a registered business to obtain a .com.au domain name, you can now apply for as many names as you like, and they can be names that are simply derivatives of your business name or even names of your products and services. They no longer have to be names that match your registered business name exactly, but they do need to be connected to your business in some way.

This means that you can effectively purchase domain names for each of your main products or services if necessary. In the Panel Beating business example above, Bob could now apply for names such as www.resprayservices.com.au or any of the other ones listed above that were previously unavailable to him. All he needs to do is show that he has some kind of affiliation with that name and he should be OK.

You are able to register as many .com.au domain names as you like.

The costs have come down too. Most businesses are advertising around $50 - $60 for two years (like us!). Some, however, are still trying to sell it at $140 for two years, so it pays to shop around.

If you want to search through available domain names, you can do so at our domains site at http://domains.southwestecommerce.net.au.