.now domain names: registry, rules and pricing

Amazon Registry Services, Inc. wears two hats here: it's the IANA-listed sponsoring organisation and the contracted registry operator for .now, named on the ICANN Registry Agreement signed 25 June 2015. There's no separate corporate parent named in the paperwork beyond Amazon Registry Services itself, though the company sells .now alongside its other branded strings, .bot and .you, through its own registry site.

The actual running of the thing, the servers that answer lookups and hold the registration database, falls to Nominet, listed as Technical Contact in the IANA record. Amazon Registry Services holds the contract and calls the shots on policy; Nominet does the plumbing.

Three separate parties touch any .now domain you register. The registry, Amazon Registry Services, holds the ICANN contract, sets wholesale pricing and whatever registration rules apply, and keeps the authoritative database running via Nominet. The registrar, a company such as Namecheap, 101domain or EuroDNS, is who you actually hand your money to, sets the retail price and answers your support tickets. The registrant is you, the person or organisation named on the WHOIS record with control over how the domain gets used. These roles don't blur into each other: the registry never sells direct to the public, and your billing and support relationship runs through the registrar, not Amazon.

.now doesn't care who you are. No nationality requirement, no industry restriction, no need to prove you've got a local presence anywhere. 101domain confirms this outright: individuals and businesses can both register, and there's no registry-level restriction sitting on general-availability names.

That's a registry rule, not registrar generosity. It traces back to how Amazon Registry Services structured the string under its ICANN agreement, and every accredited registrar selling .now inherits that same baseline whether they like it or not. Where registrars actually differ is in practice, not eligibility: whether they bother offering WHOIS privacy, and what identity checks (if any) show up at checkout. 101domain lists both DNSSEC and private registration as available, and EuroDNS allows domain privacy too.

Nothing in the dossier points to a reserved-name list, a sunrise-only restriction still hanging around, or some premium-tier rule unique to .now beyond the usual new-gTLD launch mechanics. So any name you've got your eye on is standard first-come, first-served, unless a registrar's search tool flags it as premium or somebody's already grabbed it.

.now runs on the standard gTLD transfer process ICANN sets for everyone: an EPP authorisation code from the losing registrar, confirmation from the registrant, and a move that tacks a year onto the term at the gaining registrar. Registrars usually switch on a client transfer lock by default, so you will need to remove that before starting a transfer. The base ICANN policy of a lock period after registration or a registrant change has historically applied to gTLDs including .now, though ICANN has voted to phase it out. Check with your registrar for where things stand now.

Registrar sources in the dossier confirm a one year minimum term and a ten year maximum, in line with the usual ICANN rules for generic TLDs. Renewal pricing is set by individual registrars on top of the wholesale registry fee, and the dossier does not include a published .now-specific figure for that wholesale fee.

What is not published: the dossier has no confirmed grace period length, redemption period length, or restore fee specific to .now. Generic gTLDs commonly run an expiry grace window of roughly 30 to 45 days followed by a redemption period with a restore fee, but none of the .now sources here state those figures directly. Treat any number you find elsewhere as a registrar estimate, not confirmed registry policy.