Internet Company news South Africa

Finding the best address for website and email use

Before 2014, those who were savvy enough to have a web presence back then were limited to a couple of dozen choices that included .co.za, .com, .net, .org, .name and the likes. In the years since, the choices have increased massively. In this write-up, we examine the wide range of choices available in South Africa today for just about any use-case.
Finding the best address for website and email use

While .za has been relatively successful in South Africa based on its popularity, it can still be slightly challenging for one to find the perfect domain name considering many of the good ones are taken already. With about 1.3 million, .co.za domains actively registered at the time of writing it can sometimes require some creativity to find the very best domain possible. Noteworthy, there are still zillions of possible domains that can be registered under .co.za – the resource itself is virtually infinite.

Either way, there are many other South African domain endings, in addition to .co.za, that one can choose from.

.ZA

Other .za extensions readily available to the general public are:

  • .net.za – ideally for suitable for internet service providers and telecom operators, it can be used as a credible alternative to .co.za
  • .org.za – this is the ideal choice for South African non-profits and other miscellaneous organisations 
  • .web.za – this is positioned as a general-use alternative to .co.za

While over a dozen other .za domain extensions (like .gov.za, .ac.za) exist, they are heavily regulated and only made available to relevant qualified entities.

City TLDs

Any enterprise in any of South Africa’s three main metro areas can also make use of any of the three city top-level domains designated for them respectively. Not only do they serve as credible online identities, they also help with re-enforcing one’s association with the said cities.

The three South African city TLDs are:

Africa

Where an entity wishes to target more than one African country, however, no other domain ending can beat .africa – it is specifically designed for any and every entity that wishes to identify with Africa. It is open to individuals, businesses, non-profits, governments, etc. across Africa.

300+ domain endings

Even better, there are over 300 other domain extensions like .xyz, .online, .store, .site etc, available from Web4Africa - across 18 categories. The categories are listed below:

  • Business
  • Education
  • Fun and entertainment
  • Financial
  • Food and beverage
  • Healthcare
  • Home and construction
  • Legal
  • Marketing and communications
  • News and information
  • Photography
  • Political and military
  • Real estate
  • Shopping and retail
  • Sports and fitness
  • Style and fashion
  • Technology
  • Travel and geography

Established in 2002, Web4Africa is an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar offering over 300 domain extensions to clients worldwide. Other services offered by Web4Africa include web hosting and virtual servers from data centers across four African countries.

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