FAQ for DENICdirect Customers

 If you have a .de domain administered by DENICdirect, you can contact DENIC directly over any matter that concerns you. You will find a substantial collection of information as well as all the forms you are going to need in the special section of DENIC's website dedicated to DENICdirect. There is also a special category of FAQ for DENICdirect customers. If you need any information that you cannot find there, you can send an e-mail to info[at]denic[dot]de.

DENICdirect also provides a telephone service, which is staffed without interruption from Monday to Friday (except local public holidays) from 8:00 to 18:00 (C.E.T.). You can call +49 69 27 235 270.

Alternatively, you can send us your message by fax to +49 69 27 235 238 or post it to:

DENIC eG
 Direct Services
 Kaiserstraße 75-77
 60329 Frankfurt am Main
 Germany

 The easiest way to contact DENIC is to send an e-mail to info[at]denic[dot]de, send a message by fax to +49 69 27 235 238 or post it to:

DENIC eG
 Direct Services
 Kaiserstraße 75-77
 60329 Frankfurt am Main
 Germany

DENICdirect also provides a telephone service, which is staffed without interruption from Monday to Friday (except local public holidays) from 8:00 to 18:00 (C.E.T.). You can call +49 69 27 235 270.

 DENICdirect offers two distinct services:

DENICsmall (DS): This service allows up to five mailexchange- or address-entries within a domain. It is preferred, if you don't want to run your own nameservers. DENICsmall covers www.domain.de, ftp.domain.de and e-mail forwarding. The data to be specified on the order form includes billing address, domain name, some data about the holder and a responsible contact person. Additionally at least one technical contact and the technical entries for the domain have to be specified.

DENICnameserver (NS): This means delegation of the responsibility for a domain to at least two nameservers, that the customer specifies. All nameserver queries for this domain will be redirected to these responsible nameservers. The data to be specified on the oder form includes billing address, domain name, some data about the holder and a responsible contact person. Additionally at least one technical contact, a zone contact and the nameservers have to be specified.

A domain holder can initiate changes at any time (DENIC usually calls this process an UPDATE). We enter such changes into our system immediately. An update job can be used to modify the type of entry (DS, NS) as well as its contents. All updates must be in writing and must be submitted to DENIC as complete jobs. This update service is part of the maintenance covered by the registration fee and is thus not invoiced separately.

Important notice:

Domain registration through DENICdirect does not include any Internet access or any web space. You can only obtain these services from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are numerous ISPs to choose from and they also include many of DENIC'S members.

 DENIC is not an Internet service provider (ISP), so it does not make any IP services (such as Internet access, web space, and so on) available for third parties. You can only get such services from an actual Internet service provider. There are numerous ISPs to choose from and they also include many of DENIC'S members.

 Currently, the costs for registering a .de domain through DENICdirect are EUR 116.00 per domain for the first year. Thereafter the annual maintenance fee is EUR 58.00 per domain for each subsequent year. If you need more information, you'll find it in DENIC's Price List.

 Important Notice:

A domain registration through DENICdirect does not include any Internet access or any web space. You can only obtain these services from an Internet Service Provider (ISP), for instance from many of our members.

 DENIC is a non-profit service provider. Since the cooperative does not set out to operate at a surplus, the DENICdirect service is required to break even (i.e. the costs it incurs must be offset by its revenues). Our structures are such that a domain registration through DENICdirect incurs greater costs than processing domain-registration jobs submitted by our members. The result of this is that the prices charged by DENICdirect are generally higher than those of providers, who often include domain registration in their standardized packages.

DENICdirect no longer offers a discount for .de-Domain registration. Please refer to our current Price List, effective since January 1, 2007.

 Of course, you must indicate what domain you want. Apart from that, you must complete the printed or online application form with all the requested particulars concerning the domain holder, the administrative contact, the technical contact and the invoice address and, where appropriate, the technical data and the details of the zone administrator. You will find further explanations about all the particulars we require in DENIC's Domain Guidelines and also on our information page.

Important notice:

A domain registration through DENICdirect does not include any Internet access or any web space. You can only obtain these services from an Internet Service Provider (ISP), for instance from many of our members.

 The processing time depends above all else on how meticulous you are in filling out your domain-application form correctly and completely. Once we have received a signed domain application from you that we are able to process without needing to contact you for any sort of clarification, we can normally feed it into our electronic registration system within two working days, where it will be processed virtually instantaneously. If any of the required particulars are missing, wrong or illegible, we'll need to contact you to sort them out. That, of course, will cause a delay in processing. You can probably prevent that from happening if, before you complete the application form, you take a careful look at the explanations about each of the required particulars given on our special information page. You are also very strongly advised to read through DENIC's Domain Terms and Conditions and its Domain Guidelines.

 Important disclaimer! The registration form DENIC provides online is not in any way contractually binding. It is merely a convenient way of entering the necessary data quickly. DENIC only accepts written applications that bear the applicant's personal signature. You can send them to us either by fax to +49 69 27 235 238 or by post to:

DENIC eG
 DENICdirect
 Kaiserstraße 75-77
 60329 Frankfurt

 No. It is not possible for a .de domain to be registered faster by going through DENICdirect rather than one of DENIC's members. All registrations are handled by the same registration system on a strict “first come, first served” basis, and this system makes no distinction according to where it receives its jobs from.

This is done quite deliberately to ensure that no source of domain jobs is given precedence over the others.

Please note that the form provided online on the DENICdirect web pages is not part of a real-time registration system. Once your data has been captured, we send you the completed application by fax or by conventional post, because we need to have an original signature from you.

 Yes. It is possible for a provider to register a .de domain through DENICdirect. But registration through a DENIC member may well prove to cost less. If you would like to have a .de domain registered at DENICdirect, you should ask your provider about it and make sure that we are sent a domain-application form that has been filled out completely and correctly, and signed. You can either fax it to us at +49 69 27 235 238 or post it to:

DENIC eG
 DENICdirect
 Kaiserstraße 75-77
 60329 Frankfurt

If you want to have your domain administered by DENICdirect in future, you must complete a procedure called a Provider Change. Responsibility for administering your domain will then be transferred from your provider (or from the DENIC member your provider works with if the provider is not a DENIC member) to DENICdirect. If you want to carry out a Provider Change, you must first give notice on your existing domain contract with your current provider. The provider will send you a provider change password, the AuthInfo. You must communicate this password to DENICdirect who will then implement the provider change with the AuthInfo. To do this, please send DENICdirect a Provider change form that you have filled out completely and signed.

First of all, an AuthInfo must be recorded for the domain. To be able to store the AuthInfo, we need the corresponding form with all the particulars completed correctly and with your signature on it. You can either fax it to us at +49 69 27 235 238 or send it by regular mail to

DENIC eG
Direct Services
Kaiserstraße 75-77
60329 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
A provider change has no effect on any DENICdirect fees that may be due or already paid. Payments already made to DENIC will not be refunded.

 Yes. As a provider, you can register .de domains through DENICdirect on behalf of your customers. In the DENICdirect section of our website, you will find information about the alternatives of registering using our online form or by fax/post. It is important to make sure that you are familiar with DENIC's Domain Terms and Conditions as well as its Domain Guidelines. If you think it likely that you will be registering large numbers of domains, you should seriously consider working in cooperation with one of DENIC's members.

 For this purpose, we provide you with a special Provider Change form. Of course, you have to indicate which domain is concerned. Apart from that, we definitely need the data concerning the domain holder and the administrative and technical contacts as well as the invoice address. In some cases, we also need the technical data and the details of the zone administrator. Please note that the domain-holder data entered must tally PRECISELY with the holder data already stored for that domain on DENIC's system. You can find further explanations about all the necessary particulars in DENIC's Domain Guidelines and on DENICdirect's information page.

You, yourself, can have a considerable influence on the time taken to complete a provider change. Once DENICdirect is in possession of a full and accurate application for a provider change from you, we immediately feed your data into our system and send you an invoice to the address you indicate for the purpose. However, the provider change is only activated once DENIC has received your payment and successfully booked it. Your previous provider should have sent you an AuthInfo by then. The process is delayed if the request form was filled out incompletely or incorrectly because we then have to contact you for clarification.

 If you call your homepage in your browser and find that it is no longer being displayed, you should contact either your provider or the domain's technical contact and explain the problem to them.

If instead of seeing your homepage you see the information page from DENICdirect, this is to inform you that there is a problem affecting your domain directly and not the services from your provider. In this particular case, you are requested to contact DENICdirect.

 Before we make any changes to your domain data, we must have a written request from you and it must be signed by either the domain holder or the domain's administrative contact. In your own interest, please use the special form for domain updates provided for the purpose. You can send it to us either by fax to +49 69 27 235 238 or by post to:

DENIC eG
 Direct Services
 Kaiserstraße 75-77
 60329 Frankfurt am Main
 Germany

 The decisive factor influencing processing time is in your own hands - namely whether or not you fill in your form for domain updates completely and accurately. Once we have received a signed job order from you that we are able to process without having to obtain any form of clarification first, your update job is generally fed into DENIC's electronic registration system within two working days, where processing is virtually instantaneous. If the system detects that all the data in the job is correct (especially the data for the name server), then the changes are immediately made to the records. If any of the data is detected as wrong, there is bound to be some delay, since we will need to contact you to sort things out.

The information page you see is a special web page set up by DENIC. At the time the domain holder has no Internet presence under this URL.

If you have questions you want to put to the domain holder you can find out the necessary contact data by using DENIC's whois search.

If you yourself are the holder of the domain in question, we would ask you to get in touch with DENICdirect.