What is a .so domain, and can anyone outside Somalia register one?

Somalia, the country behind .so

Somalia is not an island. It is a country on the Horn of Africa, with Mogadishu as its capital. It became independent in 1960 and has been a federal republic since a provisional constitution in 2012.

The code .so was created on 28 August 1997, according to Wikipedia. In February 2009 ICANN approved redelegating it to Somalia's Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, and IANA's report on the move is dated 3 February 2009. The extension was relaunched through registrars on 1 November 2010. In July 2015 the registry moved to the Somali Network Information Center (SONIC), which introduced limits on buyers not tied to Somalia, and several registrars stopped selling new names. On 9 March 2018 the newly created National Communications Authority took control from SONIC and Cloudy Registry.

IANA's record for .so was last updated in April 2016. It still names the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications as sponsor and soNIC as technical contact, so it does not show the 2018 change. Sources describe the rules differently, as the rules section shows.

Few large registrars sell .so today. Of the ten we surveyed on 2 November 2026, only Namecheap, Dynadot, Gandi and Epik list it.

Who uses .so, and why?

Most buyers treat .so as a word, not as a place. "So" ends many English phrases, so start-ups and communities use it for names that read like sentences. Hiro, a developer-tools company for Bitcoin layers, uses hiro.so. We found few other large sites on .so that we could verify, and we prefer to say so rather than list guesses.

That tells you something about the extension. It is a niche choice with a short list of registrars, a history of changing registry rules, and an eligibility text that is not the same everywhere. It can suit a personal project, a community or a product whose name ends well with "so". It is a weaker fit for a brand that must stay online for ten years with no surprises, or for anyone who needs WHOIS privacy to be certain.

If you want a similar short word ending, compare it with .co and .me, whose rules are clearer.

.so rules: eligibility, content and registry changes

Eligibility is disputed. Namecheap and Dynadot sell .so to anyone and say you need not live in Somalia. Gandi's rule text says the extension is open to people with a bona fide connection to Somalia: institutions, residents and others who can prove a link. We could not retrieve the registry's own current text, so we cannot say which is right, or whether the registry could act on a name later. Wikipedia reports that limits on buyers not tied to Somalia were introduced in 2015.

Content. The registry disallows adult and gambling content, according to the contract summaries of Gandi and 101domain.

Format. Names run 3 to 63 characters, with no accented (IDN) characters.

Terms. 1 to 10 years. A transfer in needs a domain more than 60 days old and renews it for one year.

DNSSEC. IANA lists the delegation as insecure, so .so names cannot be signed with DNSSEC.

Privacy. Not confirmed. We found no registry statement on privacy services for .so, so check before you rely on one.

Known risks. The registry changed hands in 2015 and 2018, IANA's record still shows the older arrangement, and the eligibility text varies. If the name is critical to your business, an extension with clearer rules is the safer pick.