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Anyone can register .de domain names on a first-come, first-served basis. The administrative contact for the domain name must have an address in Germany and, if not, we provide a proxy service.

These domain names can have 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 #.

DENIC eG is the registry for .de domain names.

The minimum and maximum registration length for .de domain names is one year.

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.

No. We do not currently support the transfer of .de domain names to us.

You must initiate the transfer through your new registrar. The transfer requires an authorization code. Please contact our support team to request it.

No. Domains By Proxy® Private Registration and Protected Registration are not available for .de domain names.

No. We do not currently support the backorder of .de domain names.

Yes, but you cannot change the organization (company name) or the registrant's first and last names. See Moving a Domain Name Out of Your Account for more information.

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 in the Domain Manager. See Update contact information for more information.

Yes. The following nameserver requirements apply to all .de domain names:

• You must have two authoritative nameservers. You can verify if your nameservers are authoritative by visiting http://www.denic.de/en/background/nast.html 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.