How to register a .bm domain

Here is how it works, and the question worth asking before you pay for one.

Who can register one

The registry’s rule is short: businesses registered in Bermuda, and residents of Bermuda. A company incorporated here qualifies. So does an individual who lives here. An overseas company with no Bermuda presence does not, which is why foreign registrars advertise .bm with a “local presence” service attached. That service is them standing in as your Bermuda contact, and you pay for it: the same domain that costs $100 direct from the registry costs considerably more through an intermediary. If you are reading this from Bermuda, you do not need the middleman, and going direct is where the saving is.

What the registry sells

The registry sells names directly under .bm, and under .com.bm, .net.bm and .org.bm, all at the same $100. The bare .bm is the one to take when you can: it is shorter, it reads cleaner, and the two-level names have never carried enough separate meaning here for the distinction to hold. This site is dot.bm. Nobody has ever asked why it is not dot.com.bm.

The registration itself

You register through bermudanic.bm, and the registration is a contract with the Registry General that sets out the terms. Have your business registration to hand, because the registry’s whole eligibility model rests on the name being backed by a real Bermuda entity, and expect the process to take days rather than minutes. This is a small government registry rather than a self-serve checkout. The common mistake is treating the domain as the last step of a launch, so register the name when the business is registered rather than the week the website goes live.

The question the registrars will not ask: do you want one?

A .bm domain says one thing loudly: this is a Bermuda business. When that is the message, it is the right domain, and it is why this studio runs on dot.bm and built fix.bm and writethem.bm on the same ending. Civic tools for Bermudians should carry the island in the name.

Our own products are not all on .bm, though. Wopnin runs on wopnin.fyi, and the reasoning applies to plenty of local businesses. A generic domain costs a fraction of the price, renewed annually, and can be registered in minutes with nobody’s paperwork. More to the point, if there is any chance the thing you are building serves anyone beyond Bermuda, a .bm ending shrinks it in the reader’s mind before they have read a word. Wopnin’s forecasting works for any island, not only this one, so a .bm would have argued against the product it was naming.

Two housekeeping points that outlast the registration

Registration and DNS are separate jobs. The registry gives you the name; something still has to host its records and point it at your website and email, and that is usually your web company or hosting provider, not the registry.

And renew on time, every time. A lapsed domain does not just take your website down, it takes your email with it, and a name that expires can be registered by someone else. If a company runs your site, make sure one specific party owns the renewal, in writing. Who holds your domain is one of the questions in what to look for in a local developer, and if you want the whole setup handled as one job, that is a conversation we have.