.NL is one of the most popular ccTLDs on the planet , and now you can choose it as a free domain name for your website on our platform!

The history behind its popularity

Back in 1986, .NL was one of the first ccTLDs to be introduced on the domain market. It was first managed by the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science and was available for free to universities and research departments of large companies.

Ten years later, in 1996, .NL was handed over to the Foundation for Internet Domain Registration in the Netherlands, which became the official .NL registry and began operating on a commercial basis.

As a registry, SIDN has a quite uncommon distribution network of partnering registrars, most of them being ISPs, IT service bureaus, media service bureaus, as well as a few large enterprises with different brand names, which is considered a pure phenomenon in the domain name industry. The .NL TLD was made available to the general public in 2003. Thanks to its positive image as a scientific research domain, long presence on the domain market and an ever-growing community of supporters, .NL has become one of the most popular country-code TLDs.

It has been ranked 9th in the quarterly VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief of March 2015, after the .de, .cn, .uk and .ru TLDs. Today, almost 40% of all .NL domain names are registered by individuals and this number keeps growing.

Kind Regards,
Support team