.ing domain names: who runs the registry and who can register

Charleston Road Registry Inc. is the outfit behind .ing, a Google entity and the IANA-listed sponsoring organisation for the extension. It holds the contracted registry operator role under a base, non-sponsored Registry Agreement signed with ICANN on 23 January 2014. Google Inc. sits as the administrative and technical contact, and publicly the registry just calls itself Google Registry. Nobody outsources the backend here either: Charleston Road Registry runs the .ing nameservers itself, straight from the IANA delegation record.

One source we checked, domaindetails.com, calls .ing a restricted brand TLD "operated by ING Groep N.V." for its own exclusive use. That's simply wrong. The IANA record, the ICANN registry agreement and the registry's own get.ing site all tell a different story: .ing is an open, general-purpose namespace. ING Group registers names like bank.ing on it, but as one customer among many, sitting alongside the other brands the registry showcases on its own site.

Strip away the jargon and the setup is ordinary. Charleston Road Registry, trading as Google Registry, sets the rules and the wholesale price for every .ing name that exists. Registrars such as Gandi, Namecheap and Dondominio are the accredited shops where you actually buy one, and they fight over price and support to earn your business. The registrant is just whoever ends up holding the name day to day, ING Group on bank.ing, or someone running a personal project who liked the pun.

The rule itself is simple: open registration. Anyone, anywhere can register a .ing domain, no residency, citizenship or local-presence requirement attached, according to Gandi and other registrars. It's first-come, first-served once general availability kicked in.

• Sunrise period (20 September to 24 October 2023): reserved for verified trademark holders through the Trademark Clearinghouse.
• General availability (from 5 December 2023): open to any individual, business or organisation worldwide.

Registrars layer a few operational quirks on top of that. Some premium strings come with a higher registration fee set by the registry, with standard pricing kicking in for renewals and transfers afterwards, per Dondominio. Anyone registering a two-character letter/letter label has to confirm they won't misrepresent an affiliation with a government or country-code manager, and names on the ICANN IOC/Red Cross/IGO reserved list can only go to those organisations, per the registry's own registration policy. None of that is a nationality or industry restriction. It's just standard gTLD housekeeping.

A .ing transfer works the same way as any other gTLD: unlock the domain at your current registrar, grab the EPP (authorisation) code, and confirm the move with the registrar you're switching to. ICANN policy has long applied a 60-day lock after initial registration, a completed transfer, or a change of registrant contact. The GNSO voted in 2025 to scrap this lock, but implementation isn't expected before 2026, so for now, assume the lock still applies (source).

Registration terms run from 1 to 10 years, renewals from 1 to 9, per published registrar term limits (source). Google Registry's pricing policy sets a 5-day Add Grace Period, a 45-day Auto-Renew Grace Period after expiry, and a 30-day Redemption Grace Period once a domain is deleted (source).

There's no single public rate card for restore costs during redemption, retail prices vary by registrar. Dondominio charges a 70 EUR restore fee on top of renewal, Dynadot charges $120.40 (source, source). What the registry itself charges registrars at wholesale for a restore isn't published anywhere.

In practice .ing gets used for short, word-play domains built around a verb or noun stem. Canva's design tool sits at design.ing and draw.ing, travel service Going uses go.ing, the drag-and-drop site builder mmm.page uses mak.ing, the clothing brand Adapt uses adapt.ing, the Mavericks Awards use surf.ing, a Swiss engineering association uses suisse.ing, a tattoo studio uses ink.ing, and ING Group runs bank.ing for its own brand (source).

Before going live, note that .ing sits on the HSTS preload list, so HTTPS is required for every connection. Registrars must disclose this before you buy, and you need a working SSL certificate configured from day one or the site simply will not load in most browsers (source). The sources we checked say nothing about .ing-specific email deliverability, so budget the usual precautions there yourself.

Given the HTTPS overhead and the word-play format, .ing suits a short, memorable domain for a single product or campaign far more than a full company domain carrying email and multiple subdomains. One naming tip: pick a root word that already ends correctly without a doubled consonant, such as draw, adapt or design, rather than one that needs doubling in standard English, such as shop or plan. The domain has no way to supply that extra letter for you.