About .ca Domains

Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the registry for .ca domain names.

Restrictions

Domain names can be up to 63 characters, and can contain letters (a to z), numbers (0 to 9), and hyphens (except as the first or last characters of the domain name). You cannot register domain names with special characters such as & and #.

CIRA periodically audits domain names to ensure they conform to eligibility requirements. If CIRA cannot confirm the new registrant's eligibility status, CIRA might request information from you to prove your eligibility. You must send them the requested information within the specified time frame to avoid deactivation of your .ca domain names.

Who can register .ca domains?

See Registering a .CA domain for details about who can register .ca domains and how.

Transfer Exceptions

• When a domain transfer takes place, it must be initiated for every variant (IDN) of that .ca domain name. If all variants are not transferred, the transfer will fail.
• On the Pending Transfers page in the Domain Manager, your administrative contact's email address displays as nocontactsfound@secureserver.net because we cannot access your Whois contact information.
• We normally send the transaction IDs to the administrative contact's email address. For .ca transfers, we send them to the email address on file in your account with us.
• Transfers normally take five to seven days from the time you authorize them. However, a .ca transfer goes through immediately after you enter the transaction ID, security code, and authorization code, and then click Finish.

If the domain name expired, you have 30 days from the expiration date to transfer it to us. To transfer a .ca domain name to us within that 30-day expiration grace period, contact our Support department for assistance.

Private and Protected Registration

CIRA automatically applies its own private registration to new .ca domain names. Specifically, CIRA limits the personal information that displays in the Whois database for the following legal types:

• Canadian citizens
• Permanent residents
• Legal representatives
• Aboriginal persons

If you registered a .ca domain name as an individual registrant, you can contact our support department to cancel or re-add private registration.

Renewals

CIRA automatically renews .ca domain names on their expiration dates. If you do not pay for the renewal within 42 days of the expiration date, you can attempt to recover your .ca domain name, and there might be a fee to do so. See Recovering Expired Domain Names for instructions.

Refund details

For details on refunds, please visit GoWebsite's Refund Policy page and look under BOTH of the following categories:

• Products with Special Refund Terms (look under Domain Name Registrations/Renewals)
• Products Not Eligible for Refunds

Nameserver requirements

You can have a maximum of six nameservers per .ca domain name, and each must have a unique IP address.

First, follow the instructions in Add my own host names as nameservers to set the host name and IP addresses for each nameserver. Then, follow the instructions in Set nameservers for domains hosted & registered with GoWebsite to set the nameservers in our system.

Tax Information

All .ca registrants must pay the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and might need to pay Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), which is GST and the Provincial Sales Tax (PST).

For disputes with .CA domains, please see Dispute resolution process for .CA domains.