Buy your .trade domain today

.trade domains are used across three fairly different groups, which is unusual for an extension. Import and export firms, wholesalers and distributors are the first. Financial and commodity traders, brokers and trading educators are the second. Skilled tradespeople are the third.

The registry and most sellers position it for commerce and financial trading, and that is where most current registrations sit. Marketplaces, barter and swap sites, and collector trading communities also fit the commerce reading naturally.

The third group is the one nobody markets to, and it may be the most interesting. An electrician, plumber, joiner or roofer describes their work as a trade, and no registrar page addresses them at all.

.trade carries all three meanings, and which one a reader picks depends almost entirely on the word you put in front of it.

That is the practical mechanism. “baltic.trade” reads as commerce. “options.trade” reads as finance. “hallamelectrical.trade” reads as a tradesperson, because the name has already told you. The extension is neutral and your name does the work.

So test it before you buy. Write your full address down, show it to someone who does not know your business and ask what they think you do. If the answer is wrong, the name in front is too vague, not the extension.

No, .trade is open to anyone and nothing is verified when you register. There is no license check, no company number requirement and no local presence rule.

The registry’s own material talks about serving an affinity group and promoting consumer trust, which reads as though there might be a test, and there is not one. No eligibility policy document is published, and third-party records list no known restrictions.

Two things follow. You can register a name today with no paperwork. And the extension carries no implied credential, so if you want customers to know you are qualified or insured, that has to be on the page rather than in the address.

Yes, a .trade domain works well for a tradesperson, and the extension is arguably underused for exactly that. Nothing stops a local electrician or plumber taking one.

The advantage is availability. Because sellers market the extension at commerce and finance, the vocabulary of the building trades has been picked over far less, so a name combining your surname or your town with your trade has a real chance of being free.

Put your trade in the name rather than relying on the extension to imply it: “mortonplumbing.trade” is unambiguous, while “morton.trade” is not. Then add the things local customers look for, a service area, qualifications, insurance and photographs of finished work.

No, the .trade registry states that its premium domains do not carry a premium renewal rate, which is genuinely unusual and worth knowing.

On most extensions a premium name costs more every single year, so the higher figure is a permanent commitment rather than a one-off. Here the registry’s published position is that the higher price applies at registration and the renewal returns to a normal rate, and it says transfer rates are low as well.

Confirm it on the seller’s page at the point of purchase, since sellers set their own retail figures. If a good short name is available as a premium, this policy makes it a much better buy on .trade than the same situation would be elsewhere.

.trade is unusual among low-cost extensions because the renewal stays close to the first-year price at most sellers, rather than jumping once the promotion ends.

Most cheap extensions work on a deep first-year discount followed by a much larger annual figure, which is why so many of those names get dropped after a year. .trade is generally priced low in both years at mainstream sellers, so the cost of holding the name is roughly what you paid to get it. A few sellers do price it well above the market, which means the spread between sellers is wider than the spread between years.

Compare renewal figures rather than introductory ones, and turn on auto-renew once you have chosen. That predictability is the real reason to pick this extension over a cheaper first year somewhere else.

A .trade domain can be caught by broad filtering rules on some corporate networks, and it is fair to know that before you build a business on it.

The reason is guilt by association rather than anything about .trade specifically. It does not appear in current phishing rankings, unlike some other low-cost extensions, but network administrators sometimes block long lists of inexpensive extensions wholesale, and published examples of those lists include .trade. Mail is rejected before a person ever sees it.

So authenticate your mail with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, test delivery to the kinds of inboxes your customers use, and keep a phone number visible. If most of your work comes from large companies with strict IT policies, consider a mainstream extension for email and use .trade for the site.