The mission and purpose of the applied-for .hello gTLD is to establish a namespace built around greeting, introduction, and connection. "Hello" is the standard English greeting and one of the most widely recognised words internationally, giving it a friendly, approachable, and immediately understood meaning across a broad global audience. Intended registrants include individuals, families, communities, creators, and businesses in areas such as hospitality, lifestyle, events, and communication that want a welcoming, conversational identity, as well as brands using the term as part of marketing and customer-facing efforts. Registrations may be used for personal profiles and contact pages, introduction and landing pages, brand campaign and product-launch sites, customer welcome and onboarding pages, support and customer-service contact points, invitations and event sites, greeting and messaging services, and community presences. The TLD is intended to be sustainable because greeting and introduction are common, recurring uses across personal, commercial, marketing, and customer-service contexts, and the wide recognition of the word is expected to support a broad and continuing base of potential registrants over time.
The .hello gTLD will provide a namespace for businesses, creators, and individuals seeking an approachable primary web presence -- reflecting the widespread use of "hello" as a brand introduction point across email, social, and web. Registrations will be open to anyone.
Intended registrants include personal brands, creative professionals, small businesses, greeting card and communications companies, language-learning platforms, and anyone seeking a welcoming domain that serves as a clear introduction or landing page.
This purpose is sustainable because "hello" is a timeless, universally understood word with broad commercial and personal appeal for domain registrations.
The proposed .hello top-level domain represents greeting and introduction - the point of first contact between a person or organization and the audience they want to reach. Such openings appear on landing pages, contact pages, announcements, and personal and business introductions.
Intercap Registry proposes to operate .hello as an open namespace, available for registration by the general public without restriction.
Intended registrants include individuals, creators, businesses, and organizations of all kinds that want a short, memorable address for introducing themselves or opening a conversation. Intended users are members of the general public seeking those resources.
Intercap Registry will make .hello names available worldwide through ICANN-accredited registrars, promote awareness and adoption of the namespace, publish its registration policies ahead of launch, operate the TLD openly, respond promptly to reports of abuse, and comply with applicable safeguards.
Demand for this category is durable: introducing oneself and inviting contact is a standing function of websites and businesses across every sector, and is not tied to any trend, technology, or single company.
Link Freedom Group (LFG) aspires to become a best-in-class, vertically integrated domain name registration authority, see linkfreedomgroup.link. This TLD is part of a carefully curated portfolio of strings that LFG intends to pursue in ICANN’s 2026 New gTLD Program. In assembling this portfolio, LFG focused on securing meaningful, memorable, and commercially compelling strings that resonate strongly with end users and offer long-term growth potential.
Over the past four years, LFG (Nova Registry) has successfully grown its flagship TLD, .LINK, from approximately 125,000 to more than 300,000 domains under management. This growth has been driven by innovative distribution strategies, the expansion of registrar partnerships, and a granular pricing model that has enabled .LINK to remain competitively priced while avoiding the significant fee increases implemented by some other registry operators.
LFG’s experience in the domain name industry has reinforced one of the key lessons from the 2012 application round: long-term sustainability is strengthened through portfolio diversification. By spreading operational costs and mitigating revenue fluctuations across multiple TLDs, LFG is better positioned to withstand market volatility and invest in continued growth. Accordingly, LFG believes that even obtaining a subset of the TLDs for which it has applied will establish a diversified portfolio capable of supporting long-term economic stability, operational resilience, and sustainable growth.
The mission of the .hello gTLD is to establish a distinctive, intuitive, and globally accessible namespace through which individuals, businesses, organizations, and other lawful users can introduce themselves, establish an online presence, and connect with their intended audiences.
“Hello” is a widely recognized expression associated with greeting, introduction, and the beginning of communication. The purpose of .hello is to make this familiar and memorable term available as a flexible domain extension for a broad range of lawful uses. Potential uses may include personal websites, business websites, product and service introductions, portfolios, informational resources, marketing initiatives, online communities, and other digital identities.
The intended registrants include individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses of all sizes, nonprofit organizations, creators, associations, and other entities seeking a recognizable and versatile domain name. The intended users are Internet users worldwide who may access, interact with, or otherwise use websites, email addresses, and other services associated with .hello domain names.
.hello is intended to operate as a general-purpose gTLD. It is not intended exclusively for a particular industry, profession, geographic area, or defined community. Registrations are expected to be made available through ICANN-accredited registrars, subject to applicable laws, ICANN requirements, and registry and registrar policies.
To achieve this mission and purpose, the applicant intends to:
Establish and maintain a secure, stable, and resilient registry infrastructure consistent with ICANN requirements and applicable technical standards.
Make .hello domain registrations available through a broad network of ICANN-accredited registrars.
Promote awareness of .hello and its potential uses through registrar engagement, marketing, educational materials, and other appropriate outreach activities.
Support a broad range of lawful and innovative uses without unnecessarily limiting the namespace to a particular market or category of registrant.
Maintain policies and operational practices addressing DNS abuse, intellectual-property protections, registration data, security, and other obligations established by the Registry Agreement and applicable ICANN Consensus Policies.
Through these activities, .hello is intended to become a memorable, useful, and broadly applicable namespace for introducing people, organizations, ideas, products, services, and digital experiences to Internet users.