.academy: A Plainly Readable Ending for Course Providers
.academy was delegated to the root zone on 12 December 2013, placing it among the very first extensions from the 2012 application round to go live. Its sponsoring organisation is Binky Moon, LLC, one of the registrar-facing entities in the Identity Digital portfolio. The word travels well across languages, so the address is understood without translation and tells visitors what sits behind the brand name.
It suits anyone running courses, certificate programmes, workshops or training camps. No eligibility restriction applies, so a corporate learning department and an independent instructor stand on equal footing. One caveat worth planning for: the word sets an expectation, and visitors notice quickly when a site carrying it has no actual programme behind it. A quick domain name search shows whether your preferred name is still open.
.ACADEMY Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Binky Moon, LLC (Identity Digital)
- Delegated to the root zone 12 December 2013
- Position Among the first delegations of the 2012 round
- Eligibility No published registry restriction could be verified
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .academy domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.academy Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$22.40 /year -
Transfer
$46.79 /year -
Renewal
$50.39 /year -
Restore
$129.90 -
Late Renewal
$7.32
Included With Every .academy Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.academy Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .academy domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .academy address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .academy domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $7.32 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .academy returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.academy Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.academy Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .academy domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.academy Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .academy Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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No — no verifiable eligibility condition applies. We could not reach a primary source showing that the registry asks for accreditation, a licence or institutional paperwork, so the extension is open in practice. An internal training unit, a solo instructor, a coding bootcamp and an association all register on the same terms. Meeting the expectation the word creates is your job, though: an address alone does not build trust when the content is thin.
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Each does a different job well, so the rule is straightforward. If your brand name is short and still open in .com, familiarity argues for taking it. If the name is gone in .com and your work genuinely is education, a short .academy address usually reads better than a .com padded with extra words. Plenty of providers register both and point one at the other.
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Search engines do not state that they demote results by extension. The things that decide ranking have not changed: content quality, page speed, mobile experience and inbound links. Where the ending genuinely acts is behavioural rather than technical — an address that announces what to expect can be more explanatory at the moment of the click than a familiar but neutral one. If it matters, test both addresses per campaign.
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The flow matches other generic extensions. Remove the transfer lock at your current provider, request the authorisation code, open the request at the gaining registrar and click the confirmation sent to the administrative address. A lock period can apply within the first 60 days of registration or straight after a previous transfer. To run it through Atak Domain, follow the order set out on the domain transfer page.
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It depends on how you deliver lessons. A marketing site built from pages and a blog runs comfortably on shared hosting. If you build the learning platform yourself, pick by runtime: Node.js hosting or Python hosting. Most teams keep video off their own server — bandwidth for video, not the site itself, is what drives the bill.
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