A domain name is your website’s address on the internet — for example, yourbusiness.co.za. It helps users find your website easily instead of typing a long IP address.

You can register a domain through a registrar like Host Genie by searching for your preferred name and selecting an available domain extension (e.g., .co.za, .com, .net).

Most domains are registered for one year, but you can choose multi-year options (up to 10 years) depending on the extension.

Yes. You can transfer your domain to another registrar by unlocking it and obtaining an EPP/Auth code from your current provider.

A domain extension — also known as a Top-Level Domain (TLD) — is the suffix of your domain, such as .co.za, .com, .org, or .store.

Yes. Many businesses register multiple domains (e.g., yourbrand.co.za, yourbrand.com, yourbrand.africa) to protect their brand online.

When a domain expires, your website and emails stop working. You usually have a grace period to renew before it becomes available for others to purchase.

You can update your domain’s DNS records to point to your web hosting provider’s nameservers (e.g., ns1.hostgenie.co.za and ns2.hostgenie.co.za).

Yes. You can set up custom email addresses like info@yourdomain.co.za without having a website by using email hosting.

You can register a new domain, but you cannot rename an existing one. Once registered, a domain name cannot be edited — only replaced.

WHOIS privacy hides your personal contact details (name, email, phone number) from public domain lookup databases to protect your privacy.

You can enable auto-renewal in your client account to ensure your domain is renewed automatically each year before expiry.