Domain Names Domain Tools Emoji How-To Guide

🔎 Where to register, buy, and sell available emoji domains.

May 17, 2017 by Alvin Brown 1 Comment

Let me be the first to say that I’m not certain where emoji domains are headed.

It’s highly unlikely they’ll become the .com darling or widely accepted and used as a primary web presence option for businesses and personal brands.

You must admit that emojis spice domains up a bit, although they are not a complete replacement. In fact, I believe emojis lend themselves well to being used in print ads as short links.

That’s one of the very reasons keyword domains exist today is that we humans can’t seem to remember IP addresses.

With a decent chunk of .com domains registered, emojis might further supplement the story plot. How do you ask?

So much can be said with an emoji and much context can be lost when not used or interpreted appropriately.

Nevertheless, many people want to register .com emoji domains but don’t realize it’s not an option due to Internationalized Domain Names in Applications 2008 (IDNA2008).

If you are not familiar with IDNA 2008, it states the following:

In the original version of the Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) protocol, any Unicode code points taken from user input were mapped into a set of Unicode code points that “made sense”, and then encoded and passed to the domain name system (DNS). The IDNA2008 protocol (described in RFCs 5890, 5891, 5892, and 5893) presumes that the input to the protocol comes from a set of “permitted” code points, which it then encodes and passes to the DNS, but does not specify what to do with the result of user input. This document describes the actions that can be taken by an implementation between receiving user input and passing permitted code points to the new IDNA protocol.

Said in plain English, we’re trying to protect users of .com domains from being tricked into security breaches due to a lack of uniformity and secure structure.

Although a few emoji domains were registered, IDNA2008 does not allow for .com and .net emoji domain registration.

Not being able to register .com emojis has stumped many people and is likely acting as a barrier to limiting emoji exposure long term.

Nevertheless, the good news is that there are extensions that allow emoji domain registration. You likely know you can register .ws domains at GoDaddy and Website.ws.

But what you may not have known is that you can register emoji domains in the following seven (13) ccTLD extensions:

.ws (primary)
.to (Tonic.to)
.fm
.cf
.ga
.gg
.gq
.je
.kz
.ml
~~.ai~~
.st
.tk
.wein

Look no further than Freenom.com to purchase your next non .ws emoji domain(s). Freenom offers both paid and non-paid domain registrations.

The one thing to note about the non-paid domain registrations is that Freenom does not allow speculative purchases.

So, if you think you’re going to mass register emoji domains using Freenom, then you better think again.

Even if you pay, Freenom wants to ensure that you are using the domain as an active fully developed website. That means no landing page or coming soon business, or you’ll lose the domain altogether.

You may think this is a bit unfair or fraudulent on Freenom’s part, but Freenom explicitly states this with their terms and conditions service agreement and policy. Read more here…

I personally think it’s a pretty fair request of Freenom. After all, no one is holding a gun to anyone’s head making them register any domain exclusively with Freenom. It’s your call.

Where can you buy, sell, or lease/rent emoji domains?

Now that you know where and what extensions are available when purchasing and registering emoji domains, then use one of the following links to spark your emoji domain imagination:

If you find any additional resources, please feel free to share in the comments below. I’ll review and add them should I deem the emoji resource applicable.

That’s all for now! Happy emoji domain mining!

Written by Alvin Brown

He's an experienced and passionate serial entrepreneur, founder and publisher of Kickstart Commerce. Alvin possesses a great love for startups dominating their market using profitable digital strategies for greater commerce.