Need help during the 2024 holiday season? Click here to view our special Holiday Support schedule.

.IT domain policies

.IT is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Italy. Italy is the home of great food, wine, and now domain names. Familiar and memorable, the .IT domain will let fellow Italians know that your portfolio, project, or business is also from the same great nation as them, which will help your website build credibility and trust.

Registration

.IT domains are administered by the Italian domain name registry Registro.it.

Residency requirements

The registration requirements are permitted only to persons who have citizenship, residence, or a registered office in the countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), the Vatican, the Republic of San Marino, Switzerland, and the UK.

Registration requirements

The name length requirements of .IT domains are three to 63 characters. Domain names can include letters and numbers. Hyphens can be used, except in the first or last characters of the domain name. 

Hover does not support Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)for this TLD. 

Additional information about the registrant must be submitted when completing the registration form for any .IT domain name.

Legal entity type
  • Italian and foreign natural persons
  • Companies/one man companies
  • Freelance workers/professionals
  • Italian Non-profit organizations
  • Italian Public organizations
  • Other subjects (Italian)
  • Non Italian/Non persons
Nationality
  • Aland Island
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Cyprus
  • Czech Republic
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland
  • France
  • French Guiana
  • Germany
  • Gibraltar
  • Greece
  • Guadeloupe
  • Hungary
  • Ireland
  • Isle of Man
  • Italy
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania 
  • Luxembourg
  • Malta
  • Martinique
  • Netherlands
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Reunion
  • Romania
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom
VAT or Codice Fiscale (numeric tax code)Only required if registering as a business/company

Name server and DNS requirements

In order to activate a .IT domain, you must provide at least two functional nameservers. Nameservers can be provided when registering the .IT domain or when activating the .IT domain.

The following DNS requirements must be pre-configured for any .IT domain name registered:

  • The servers’ IP addresses must be static and correspond to those actually associated with them.
  • A CNAME must not be associated with the domain name.
  • At least one MX or A record must exist for the domain name which must not have an associated CNAME.
  • The servers must not give the following responses: not responding, not reachable, not running, non-existent domain, host not found, server failure, query failed.
  • Indicated nameservers must be authoritative for the domain name.
  • You can check for the correct nameserver configuration on the .IT registry website.

The domain name and nameserver details are transferred to the zone file within 24 hours, after which the domain name becomes active.

Nameserver changes can take up to five days to complete pending validation by the .IT registry. During that time, the domain's status will show as pendingUpdate, and the old nameservers will be displayed. If the name servers are properly configured, the nameservers will update right away. If not, the registry will continue checking for 5 days, after which the registry will remove the new servers and relist the servers previously associated with the domain.  If, after 30 days, the DNS requirements are not met, the IT registry will delete the domain.

Renewing .IT domains

All .IT domains have a registration term of one year and are automatically renewed.  

WHOIS privacy

Whois contact privacy is only applicable to entity types: Persons, Foreign, and Italian.

Back to top

Was this article helpful? If not please submit a request here

How helpful was this article?

Thanks for your feedback!

Do you still need help? If so please submit a request here.