Buy .de Domain Name

Registration is open to natural persons and legal entities anywhere in the world; there is no requirement to be resident in Germany or to set up a company there. Instead the registry imposes a single obligation: holders domiciled abroad may be asked to name an authorised recipient for the service of documents domiciled in Germany. As long as you can meet that obligation, nothing stands in the way of registration.

No, there is no residency requirement; your company or home address may be in another country. If you are domiciled abroad, however, you must name an authorised recipient domiciled in Germany when the registry asks for one. That representative does not use the domain and has no stake in ownership; they simply provide an address where official and court documents can be accepted on your behalf. Our trustee service covers this need.

An authorised recipient (Zustellungsbevollmächtigter) is a person domiciled in Germany empowered to accept official and court documents on the domain holder's behalf. The registry does not ask for one up front with every registration; the request typically arises when a legal dispute or an official notification comes up. Once it does, the deadline is two weeks, so having the arrangement ready in advance makes life easier.

If no representative is named within two weeks of the request, the registry issues a formal warning first; where the gap persists despite that warning, the domain contract may be terminated. In practice that means the domain can be taken out of your hands. For holders abroad, settling the arrangement at registration is therefore safer than trying to meet a two-week deadline that arrives unannounced.

No. The notification must state the representative's name and full postal address; a post-office box number is not sufficient. The reason is that the whole point of the arrangement is that official and court documents can actually be delivered. So when choosing a representative, make sure they have a real address open to delivery; otherwise the notification counts as incomplete and the clock keeps running.

.de names can be moved between providers. A transfer does not remove the authorised recipient obligation; if you are domiciled abroad, that arrangement has to continue after the move as well. The remaining registration period is preserved, and your website and email keep running without interruption as long as you do not change name servers. You can start on the domain transfer page.

You can see whether a .de name is registered, and the general state of the record, through WHOIS. Because of data protection obligations the registrant's contact details are published only in limited form, so a lookup will usually show you the status of the name. Run the lookup on the whois search page, and check whether a name is still free with domain search.