Canadian businesses and organizations that want a Canadian domain identity.
.CA domains
.CA domain registration, transfers and ownership
.CA is Canada’s country-code domain and has eligibility rules that do not apply to ordinary open generic TLDs. Make the registrant identity and Canadian Presence Requirement category correct before treating registration as a checkout detail.
Current DotMoose retail
Use the live checkout for current CAD pricing.
Registration, renewal, transfer, premium status and registry-specific pricing can change. DotMoose synchronizes domain retail pricing from the live reseller path instead of hard-coding point-in-time prices into this guide.
Who it fits
Choose an extension that matches the owner and audience.
Canadian citizens or permanent residents registering a personal or professional domain.
Organizations that qualify under one of CIRA’s Canadian Presence Requirement categories.
Registration requirements
Get eligibility and ownership right first.
Requirement 1
The registrant must satisfy an applicable Canadian Presence Requirement category.
Requirement 2
Registration requires acceptance of the applicable .CA registrant agreement and accurate registrant information.
Requirement 3
CIRA may request evidence supporting the selected presence category through Registrant Information Validation.
Requirement 4
Eligibility should be checked against the current CIRA policy at registration time rather than inferred from a mailing address alone.
Ownership + recovery
A domain should survive staff, agency and provider changes.
Register the domain to the person or organization that should legally/control operationally own it.
CIRA states that individual .CA registrant contact information is not displayed in public .CA WHOIS in the same way as ordinary public contact data.
Keep account recovery and registrant data current so a future transfer, renewal or validation request does not depend on a former employee or agency.
Transfer planning
Registrar, DNS and hosting are separate layers.
A registrar transfer and a DNS/nameserver change are separate operations; do not change both without a reason.
Record the authoritative DNS zone and mail records before moving a business-critical domain.
Confirm current transfer/lock/authorization requirements with the live registrar path before initiating the move.
Policy source reviewed 2026-08-29: CIRA Canadian Presence Requirements for Registrants →
Research before changing anything
Check registration state and DNS separately.
RDAP
Check public registration state
Inspect registrar, status, dates, nameservers and DNSSEC data without treating a missing record as an availability guarantee.
DNSRecord the current DNS answers
Check A, AAAA, MX, NS, TXT, CNAME and CAA records before a registrar or hosting migration.
GuideUse the transfer checklist
Separate registrar transfer, nameserver delegation and hosting cutover so one change does not accidentally break another service.
.CA with DotMoose
Availability must come from the registrar, not from WHOIS guessing.
DotMoose only treats a name as registerable when the live registrar path confirms it. Availability results are not reservations and can change before checkout completes.