Enter the Uganda market with a .CO.UG Domain

No. The rulebook does not restrict holders to companies incorporated in Uganda, and it asks for no residency, no local contact and no documents. A measurement on 15 August 2026 found holders in the zone registered in the United States, Ireland and South Africa, alongside private individuals holding names in their own name. The registry's own account form does ask you to fill in an organisation field, but no proof and no Ugandan registration is required for it. The real condition is keeping your data accurate and current.

On paper there is none: both are official namespaces of the same registry, under the same rulebook, the same dispute procedure and the same expiry chain. The difference shows up in measurement. On 15 August 2026 certificate transparency logs held 980 distinct names under .co.ug and 51 under .com.ug. Age separates them too: corporate names on .co.ug reach back to 1998, while the oldest measured .com.ug registration dates from 2018. In practice .co.ug offers recognition, .com.ug offers availability.

Two characters, and that was confirmed through two separate channels. On 15 August 2026 the registry's own availability service showed the two-character qz.co.ug, zq.co.ug and jx.co.ug as free, while the single-character a.co.ug and j.co.ug came back unavailable. WHOIS then showed that the two-character ab.co.ug has been registered since 30 August 2012 and was renewed on 2 November 2025. So a two-letter label is possible both in principle and in fact — which is exactly where this zone parts from .ug, where two-letter names are reserved.

One year is the base, and multi-year registration works. The rulebook publishes no ceiling, so it was measured: on 15 August 2026 airtel.co.ug and monitor.co.ug carried expiry dates five years past their last renewal, mtn.co.ug rather more than five, and uol.co.ug a full ten years. Terms beyond five years therefore operate in this zone in practice. The benefit is directly practical: since only a one-month renewal window follows expiry, thinning out that calendar reduces the risk of losing the name.

The name enters a grace period on its expiry date and can still be renewed there at the standard rate; the period lasts one month. Miss that window and the name is released for re-registration, so anyone may take it. The rulebook defines no separate redemption stage and no penalty recovery fee, which means there is no second chance. The registry sends reminders to the address on record. Because registration and renewal fees are excluded from refunds, not leaving the renewal to the expiry date is a concrete saving on .co.ug.

The registry's lookup server is whois.co.ug, it answers on port 43 and it recognises all three Ugandan zones. The response carries the domain status, the lock state, the registration date, the last renewal date, the expiry date, the name servers, and the name, organisation, country and e-mail of the registrant plus the administrative and technical contacts. The rulebook states that the registry offers a privacy service that masks contact details on request, but the sampled records showed the data in the clear. You can run the query from the whois search page.