But having an online presence means you need to have a domain name. It’s like your name or address on the internet — something like www.davidokwii.com. You can then share it with business associates, customers, friends and family so they can easily find you online. The problem is the “.com” top-level domains are almost all taken up by several individuals and organizations worldwide. If you want a .com domain name that consists of English words, chances are it’s been taken. This is where country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) such as the .ug domain come in. If say www.davidokwii.com has already been taken, I’ve an option of buying the www.davidokwii.ug domain instead.
How to acquire a .ug domain
Now you can acquire a domain name from a domain registrars. Domain registrars are simply custodians of top-level domains who sell them to the public. They must pay annual fees and the administration fees to ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a nonprofit organization that responsible for the coordination of maintenance and methodology of several databases of unique identifiers related to the namespaces of the Internet. The custodian of the .ug domain name is infinity computers and communication company (i3c), a private company located at Kitante, Kampala Uganda. They have setup a simple portal at https://www.registry.co.ug/ where you can buy or register your .ug country domain. You’ll need a valid email address before you acquire a domain.
How much it cost to register a .ug domain name?
A UG Domain Name currently costs USD 30/year which approximately UGX 80,000 per year. You can book or buy .ug domains from HatariCloud.com.
Why is it so more costly than .com domain
A .com domain name costs as low as $10/year which is three times less than a .ug domain name. According to Charles Musisi, the managing director of i3c, the company that manages .ug domain, the reason is simple; global domain registrars that manage top-level domains such as the .com domain benefit from economies of scale since they have a bigger global customer base compared to smaller country-specific domain registrars such as his.
Categories of .ug domain
co.ug – This is recommended for businesses or commercial (For Profit) Entities com.ug org.ug – These 2 categories are recommended for Non-Government (Not for Profit bodies ac.ug – This Category is for Higher Institutes of Learning such as Universities, or those that award Degrees, Diploma or Certificates in different professions sc.ug – This Category is set aside for Educational Institutions for Secondary School level and below go.ug – This Category is recommended for Governments Agencies such as Ministries, or Automatous Agencies or Authorities ne.ug, net.ug – These 2 categories are suitable for operators of Network Infrastructure services such as Internet Exchange Points, wholesale resellers of Internet bandwidth, and such similar services
The .com vs .ug domain
Between the .com and .ug domain, which one should one choose? The answer is, it depends. As I earlier stated, you might want to go with the a .ug domain purely on availability reasons. You might also want to go with .com domain if it’s available because it’s cheaper. For instance it would go with www.davidokwii.com which is not yet taken rather than davidokwii.ug which is also available but more costly. Multi-national businesses that would want to establish country presence definitely should register country specific domains. For instance Jumia the online retailer which is available in more than 6 countries has registered country domains for each respective country. The phrase “Africa is not a country” holds much water here. So there you have it; a complete guide to acquiring and buying the .ug domain name. If you have any tips, corrections please leave a comment below. Full disclosure: HatariCloud is an affiliate webhosting and design company. They host Dignited, Storipot among several other high-traffic websites and applications in Uganda. The offer reliable, fast web hosting, domain booking and email with great customer care. Check them out right now via http://www.hataricloud.com/. Image: checkmarknetwork.com
