.store domain — meaning, price and how to register

What does .store mean?

The .store extension means a shop, plainly and unmistakably. Radix launched it in 2016 aimed squarely at retail and e-commerce, and its value is that a visitor reading name.store knows instantly that the page sells something. In an era when most shopping happens online, an address that announces "this is a store" is a small but real piece of marketing built into the URL itself.

That descriptive clarity is the whole appeal. Where a generic extension like .online or a legacy .com tells the visitor nothing about what they will find, .store sets an expectation before the page even loads — useful for a standalone shop, a brand's commerce arm, or a seasonal or campaign storefront that wants to stand apart from the main site.

Who uses .store?

.store is used by online retailers, direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces and the commerce sections of larger companies. It is especially handy when a brand's .com is taken or is used for something else and the shop needs its own clear home — brand.store reads cleanly as the place to buy. Pop-up shops, merch stores, and product lines spun out from a parent site also lean on it, because the extension does the explaining for them.

It is a poor fit for anything that is not selling — a blog, a portfolio or a service site gains nothing from "store" and is better served by a neutral or topical extension. Within retail, though, few extensions are as on-the-nose.

.store registration rules and requirements

.store is fully open. You do not have to operate a real shop, hold a business licence, or be based in any particular country to register one — names are available first-come, first-served at standard registrars with no special eligibility checks. Radix applies no commerce-verification layer, so the only formalities are the routine ICANN registrant-data requirements common to every gTLD. The main thing to weigh, as with its sibling extensions, is the renewal pricing.

How much does a .store cost?

Being honest about the numbers: .store is often cheap in the first year — commonly around $5 on promotion — but renewals run noticeably higher, frequently in the $50–60 per year range. That is one of the larger intro-to-renewal gaps among the descriptive new gTLDs, so it deserves attention. If the storefront is a long-term asset, base your decision on the renewal cost, since that is what you will pay year after year.

Is .store good for SEO?

.store is SEO-neutral, the same as every generic TLD — search engines rank a .store storefront on the strength of its content, products, reviews and links, not on the extension. There is no boost for having "store" in the TLD and no penalty either. The genuine benefit is to shoppers: a descriptive address can improve click-through and set the right expectation in search results and ads, which is a behavioural advantage rather than an algorithmic one. Our TLD comparison guide puts it next to the alternatives.

.store vs alternatives

The closest comparison is .shop, which carries the same e-commerce signal with a slightly different emphasis — "shop" highlights the action, "store" the place. Beyond those two, a retailer might use a generic .online, fall back to .com for maximum familiarity, or, for a smaller brand, a short repurposed extension like .co. Pick .store when you want the URL itself to say "we sell things" and the renewal price works for you; weigh .shop or a generic when branding or budget points elsewhere.