Enter the Kenya market with a .CO.KE Domain

No. There is no requirement for the registrant to hold an office, a local address or an agent in Kenya. The confusion has a clear source: the registry does mention local presence, but the subject of that sentence is the registrar — a company must have an office in Kenya to be accredited as a seller. No such condition applies to the end user. A business based in Türkiye can register a co.ke name through an accredited registrar. The name of the space points to commercial activity, but the registry does not ask you to evidence that capacity; registration completes in the ordinary flow.

No. A co.ke registration requires no paperwork and involves no pending approval step. The registry applies a document requirement to only three third-level spaces: go.ke for government bodies, ac.ke for institutions of higher education and sc.ke for lower and middle level schools. In those spaces a registration opens a support ticket, and the name is not published until the documents reach the registry and the ticket is closed. co.ke is not on that list. The definition of the space points to companies, e-commerce sites and retail businesses, but that is a statement of purpose rather than a verified eligibility condition.

Both sit with the same registry, the Kenya Network Information Centre. The difference is level and how established each is. co.ke is the third level, defined by commercial purpose, and it is the address format Kenyans expect; .ke is a one-part address with no specialisation that only opened in May 2017. The gap in scale is wide: regulator figures for 31 March 2026 record 110,687 names under co.ke against 7,871 registered directly at .ke. Neither blocks the other, so holding the same name at both is the direct way to close it in the Kenyan market.

From one year up to five. The life cycle document the registry publishes states that names may be registered or renewed for periods of one to five years, and the registry's own frequently asked questions repeat the same ceiling in two separate places. Intermediate terms are valid, so a two, three or four year registration is equally possible — the term does not advance in fixed blocks. Keeping auto-renewal switched on with your registrar is the registry's own advice for keeping a name active. Choosing a longer term simply removes the burden of tracking a renewal every year.

The name is not switched off on the expiry date. For the first fourteen days you can renew it through your registrar in the ordinary way, and services keep running. From the fifteenth day the name is suspended: your website stops and email attached to that name stops with it. Renewal is still possible during suspension, but your registrar must request a restoration from the registry separately, which makes the process slower and more costly. The suspension does not last indefinitely; at the end of it the name is deleted and released to whoever registers it first. Do not leave renewal to that fourteen-day window.

No. The registry publishes no public field about the registrant at all. A lookup returns the domain name, the registry identifier, the creation, update and expiry dates, the status codes, the name servers and the registrar's details. Fields for the registrant, administrative or technical contact are simply not printed — there is not even a redacted placeholder. The registry's RDAP service behaves the same way: only the registrar appears as an entity. The data is still held by the registry and is used to verify the holder when a dispute is filed. Check your record on the whois search page.

The registry's rules expressly allow a change of registrar: holders may move their names to the registrar of their choice. Because no single central authorisation-code procedure is published, you obtain the exact steps from your incoming registrar. One point deserves attention: names often carry a transfer lock applied by the current provider. That is not a registry-wide ban, and you can ask for it to be lifted. A change of holder is a separate and slower process that may carry additional cost, which is why registering the name in the final owner's name from the outset is more practical. Start on the domain transfer page.