About .de Domains

The .de country-code top-level domain name (ccTLD) is an extension that represents Germany.

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

Details

¹ Registration requirements

The administrative contact for the domain name must have an address in Germany and, if not, we provide a proxy service. A PO box will not be permitted as an alternative.

² Renewal restrictions

Your .de domain name renews before its expiration date. The renewal date depends on whether you set the domain name to auto-renew or manually renew. We attempt auto-renewal on the first day of the month prior to the domain name's expiration date. If the renewal attempt fails, we make additional renewal attempts on the 10th and 20th of the month.

If we cannot auto-renew the domain name and you do not manually renew it by the 20th day of the month prior to the expiration date, you can attempt to recover it, and there might be a fee to do so. See Recovering Expired Domain Names for more information.

For example: Your .de domain name expires on October 10. If your domain name does not renew automatically, you can renew it manually by September 20. For automatic renewals, we attempt to renew the domain name on September 1, September 10, and September 20.

³ Nameserver requirements

• You must have two authoritative nameservers. You can verify if your nameservers are authoritative by clicking here and entering the domain name and its nameservers to receive a reply. If the answer at ZoneCheck lists a non-authoritative answer at the top of the nameserver list, your nameservers are not authoritative. The nameservers in the domain name's zone file must match the nameservers you are trying to use, or your nameservers are considered non-authoritative.
• Each nameserver must be on a separate class-C network. That is, the first three octets cannot be the same. For example, 216.1.69.1 and 68.42.99.120 are valid.
• You must have a Start of Authority (SOA) refresh value between 10000 and 86400 seconds.
• You must have a retry value between 1800 and 28800 seconds.
• You must have a Time to Live (TTL) value between 180 and 345600.
• You must specify a Mail Exchanger (MX) record that resolves to a valid mail server for the life of the domain name registration, not just for the registration itself.
• Serial numbers for all nameserver zones for the domain name must match.

⁴ Account change requirements

When you make an account change, you cannot change the organization (company name) or the registrant's first and last names.

⁵ Contact updates requirements

To update the following registrant contact fields for your .de domain names, contact our support department:

• First name
• Last name
• Organization (company name)

You can update all other domain name contact information through the Domain Manager in your account.

⁶ Refund policy

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