Process for applying for .au direct domain registrations
As you may be aware, the Australian Domain Authority (auDA) will be opening up the ability to register .au direct domains to eligible parties from the 24th of March 2022. This means you will be able to have domains such as mybusiness.au along with your existing com.au, net.au, org.au, asn.au, id.au, gov.au and edu.au. This is not compulsory and will not affect any of your existing domain names.
These domains will be made available in 2 stages depending on your eligibility to own them. Domains that directly match existing .au domains (i.e, there are existing domain registrations in the .au name space such as exampledomain.com.au or .org.au) have been designated as "Priority Status" meaning that they are subject to the priority allocation period discussed below. For all other .au direct domains, you can immediately apply and purchase them as of the 24th of March 2022.
Priority Allocation Period
The first stage, known as the Priority Allocation Period, will run from the 24th of March 2022 to the 20th of September 2022. During this period, registrants of existing .au domains (as listed above) will be able to participate in the Priority Allocation Process.
Priority status is split into 2 categories.
Category 1: Persons that hold a current eligible license (any domain ending in .au except csiro.au, and nt.gov.au) which was registered on or before the 4th of February 2018.
Category 2: Persons that hold a current eligible license which was registered after the 4th of February 2018 and before the 24th of March 2022.
You can check your Priority Status by searching for your domain here:
https://www.auda.org.au/tools/priority-status-tool
Priority Hold Process
All .au direct domain allocations that directly correspond to a currently registered eligible domain will be placed on "Priority Hold", preventing registration by the general public until the 20th of September 2022. After the 20th of September 2022, any domains that have not been applied for will have the priority status removed and the domain will be available for public registration.
Persons that hold Category 1 or Category 2 Priority Status will be able to apply to register their respective domains during the Priority Allocation Period.
Should multiple Category 1 Status Holders apply for the same .au domain, the applicants will need to mediate between themselves as to who will take ownership of the domain. If mediation is not successful, applicants can continue to pay the annual application fee until an agreement is met or the applicants withdraw their application and the last applicant standing takes ownership of the domain.
Persons that hold Category 2 Priority Status will be able to apply to register their respective domain immediately, but will only be granted that domain if all Category 1 holders (if applicable) do not apply before the end of the Priority Allocation Period or opt to not apply.
If there are multiple Category 2 applicants, the person that has had the eligible domain the longest takes priority.
For example Person A purchased thebusinessdomain.com.au on the 12th of January 2020, Person B purchased thebusinessdomain.net.au on the 24th of February 2021. Person A has owned their eligible domain the longest and will take priority if they choose to apply for thebusinessdomain.au.
Further information on the specific rules around Priority Registration can be found at the auDA website: https://www.auda.org.au/policy/auda-rules-au-direct-priority-implementation
Application/Signup Process
You will be able to apply for your respective .au direct domain through our signup. The fee taken during the signup process is an application fee to apply for a .au direct domain regardless of whether you are successful in obtaining that domain. This is not refundable as it is a fee kept by auDA for the application process. If you are successful, that fee will also include 1 year of domain registration.
As you may or may not be successful with your application, please signup ONLY for the domain with/without our DNS only service (free with a domain service), selecting a 1 year registration period. If you are successful in your application, please contact us to add additional hosting services if required and we can arrange that for you.
Please let us know if you have any questions. We appreciate how this must be overwhelming, we’ve done our best to distil the vast amounts of information around this as best we can into something more digestible. You can view all the documentation provided by auDA in the links below.
More Information
Priority Status Tool: https://www.auda.org.au/tools/priority-status-tool
Priority Allocation Process: https://www.auda.org.au/au-domain-names/au-direct/priority-allocation-process
Direct Priority Implementation: https://www.auda.org.au/policy/auda-rules-au-direct-priority-implementation
What is the Priority Allocation Process?: https://www.auda.org.au/blog/what-priority-allocation-process