.hair domain: who runs it and who can register

The IANA root zone record names XYZ.COM LLC, out of Las Vegas, as the sponsoring organisation for .hair. The same company shows up as Operator on the ICANN Registry Agreement, signed 3 December 2015. That agreement is the contract spelling out what the registry has to do to keep .hair running. Ownership hasn't been static: an IANA report from December 2016 shows the domain delegated to L'Oréal, and a later report from September 2020 shows it moved back to XYZ.COM LLC. Beyond that, the paper trail stops. The registry site simply says it is "powered by .XYZ" and leaves the corporate structure unexplained.

The actual technical work, servers, WHOIS, RDAP lookups, sits with CentralNic. It's listed as the technical contact in the IANA record and runs behind nic.hair. This is the backend plumbing, and it's a separate thing from the registry operator that holds the ICANN contract.

Buying a .hair domain means dealing with three different parties, whether you realise it or not. The registry, XYZ.COM LLC with CentralNic behind it, sets the rules and runs the master database. A registrar, GoDaddy, Namecheap, 101domain, whoever, sells you the actual registration and handles billing and support. You, the registrant, hold the registration and go to the registrar for renewals, transfers and DNS changes. The registry never enters into it directly.

Registrars mostly agree that .hair is wide open: HostPapa and TLD-List both say there are no eligibility or geographic restrictions, so anyone, individual or business, can grab a name. 101domain backs this up, confirming both individuals and businesses qualify.

One outlier breaks ranks. Instra tags .hair as "Restricted" and claims extra information is needed for registration and transfer. It never says what that extra information actually is, so we would treat this as a quirk of Instra's own process rather than a rule ICANN imposes, the registry agreement itself sets no such eligibility test. Worth confirming with your registrar before you buy, just in case.

Naming rules are the usual fare: 1 to 63 characters, letters, numbers and hyphens allowed, no hyphens in the third or fourth position, according to GoDaddy's technical summary. Registration terms start at a minimum of 1 year. Most registrars publish a maximum of 10 years, but at least one caps it at 3, so check the term limit wherever you're buying before you lock in a long registration.

.hair follows the same transfer process as every other gTLD: you get an AuthInfo (EPP) code from your current registrar, unlock the domain, then confirm the move with the new one. ICANN's standard 60-day lock kicks in after registration, after a transfer, and after any change to the registrant contact, and your registrar's own clientTransferProhibited flag needs removing before the transfer request will actually go anywhere.

Term limits are where sources start contradicting each other. Nominate and 101domain both list one year as the minimum and ten as the maximum. Hostinger, meanwhile, caps registrations at three years on its own site. Worth checking the actual registration screen before you commit to anything long-term, since these numbers clearly don't line up.

Let a .hair domain lapse and 101domain's figures show a 40-day renewal grace period, then a 30-day redemption period, then pending delete and release. Its redemption fee across gTLDs generally sits at $150 on top of the renewal cost, but that's a blanket figure rather than something confirmed for .hair specifically, and other registrars will price it differently. Nobody publishes a pending-delete window or drop-catch process specific to this extension, so treat anything past the redemption stage as a question for your registrar rather than a fixed rule.

No example in the sources we checked points to a live .hair site or a launch worth citing. The registry's own site, nic.hair, sticks to generic patterns rather than named businesses, pitching the extension as built "for hair care companies, stylists, salons, influencers, and fans" and offering up formats like YourBrand.hair or YourNiche.hair. That's marketing copy from the registry, not proof anyone's actually using it.

Before you point a .hair domain live, know what's actually confirmed and what isn't. There's no registry-mandated HTTPS or HSTS requirement on record for .hair, and nothing specific about spam-filter treatment or email deliverability. Set up TLS and SPF/DKIM/DMARC the way you would for any newer gTLD, then watch your own deliverability numbers rather than assuming trouble or assuming none.

Some buyers, marketplaces and older email systems still flinch at unfamiliar endings. Given that, .hair works well as a primary domain when the business is obviously hair-related, a salon or a stylist, say, and works better as a redirect or link-in-bio domain for an ecommerce or product brand that needs its checkout sitting on a more familiar extension.

One naming tip: the string already tells people the topic, so don't repeat it. "haircare.hair" or "hairsalon.hair" just reads redundant. A plain brand name or a person's name plus .hair does the job on its own.