.au trustee and local-presence services compared

Start with the rule, because it settles the purchase. Paragraph 2.2.3 of the .au Licensing Rules says a person must not use a proxy service or a privacy service to apply for a licence. Paragraph 2.2.6 says an agent must ensure that the person on whose behalf they are applying is recorded as the registrant in the registry data. A trustee that puts its own name on the licence is not exploiting a gap in the .au rules. It is doing the thing those two paragraphs exist to stop.

So the pick is 101domain, and it is the pick for refusing to sell the product. Its .com.au page answers the trustee question with a flat no, publishes the price at $50.49 to register and $59.99 to renew, states both qualifying routes, and adds the constraint most sellers leave out: where an Australian trade mark is the basis of your presence, the domain must be an exact match to the words the trade mark covers. On .cn the same company wins for the same reason. On .fr it rates 2. The rating follows the domain, not the company.

If you need a presence built rather than borrowed, Safenames is the only service here whose published contract describes a compliant mechanism: clause 11.2 lets it register a trade mark or form a company in order to complete the service. Read clause 11.4 before you order, because it says those items remain the sole property of Safenames Ltd.

The ten services compared

The model column is scored differently here than on any other page on this site. Selling no trustee is marked green, because on .au that is compliance rather than a missing feature. Lending you a holder is marked red, because paragraphs 2.2.3 and 2.2.6 forbid it. None of these services are affiliated with auDA, and auDA does not licence, approve or supervise trustee arrangements. Each links to its full profile in the provider directory, and the methodology explains where the figures come from.

What auDA's rules say about proxies

Most registries on this site say nothing at all about holding a domain for somebody else, which is why those pages have to reason from clauses on liability and eligibility. Australia is the exception. The rules address it directly, in four places.

• 2.2.3 a person must not use a proxy service or privacy service to apply for a licence.
• 2.2.5 an agent applying on behalf of a person warrants to the registrar and to auDA that it has been granted the authority to make the application and to bind that person.
• 2.2.6 an agent must ensure that the person on whose behalf they are applying is recorded as the registrant in the registry data.
• 2.2.7 a registrar must not act as an agent for a person making an application.

Read together, those paragraphs describe an agency model and rule out a holder-substitution one. An intermediary may do the paperwork. It may not be the licensee. And the eligibility that goes on the record is yours, which means you have to have some.

There is one more provision worth knowing, because it reveals how auDA views the failure mode. Paragraph 2.18.3 allows a registrant record to be corrected where the licence was incorrectly registered in the name of the reseller or another agent who arranged the registration. Paragraph 2.18.4 gives you fourteen calendar days to ask. The registry has anticipated the exact outcome a trustee sells you, and it treats it as an error to be fixed rather than a service to be renewed.

Who refuses to sell you one

The clearest evidence that .au is different is not in auDA's rules, it is in the price lists of the companies that sell this product everywhere else. Netim publishes a trustee table covering forty-six extensions across twenty-seven countries, from Argentina to Malaysia to South Korea, and .au and .com.au appear nowhere in it. Marcaria, which sells local presence across most of the restricted world, states in its own help centre that it does not offer a trustee for .au. 101domain marks trustee and proxy service as not available on its .com.au page while marking it available on dozens of others. Three companies whose business is selling exactly this thing have each decided not to sell it here.

What you are buying

On most restricted domains the trustee question is about ownership: the trustee is the registrant, you hold contractual rights against it, and the risk is that the contract is thin. On .au the question comes earlier than that. A licence obtained through a prohibited arrangement is vulnerable regardless of how good the contract behind it is, because the defect is in the registry record rather than in the agreement.

It is also worth being precise about what a .au registration is. It is a licence, not property. Paragraph 2.11.1 requires a registrant to continue to be a person to hold one, and 2.11.2 deems the licence cancelled thirty calendar days after that person ceases to exist. If the entity on the record is a shell that a provider closes, the clock starts without anybody telling you.

The services in detail

101domain ★★★★★★★★★★

The .com.au page states plainly that trustee and proxy service is not available, prices the domain at $50.49 to register and $59.99 to renew, and sets out both qualifying routes: an Australian company with an ACN, ABN or ARBN, or an Australian trade mark registered or in process. It also carries the exact-match constraint and warns that continued registration depends on the ABN, ACN or trade mark staying valid.

Weakness: it sells you the domain and leaves you to produce the eligibility, with no help obtaining either an ABN or a trade mark, so a buyer with no Australian footing gets an honest no rather than a route forward. Full profile.

CentralNic Reseller ★★★★★★★★★★

Documents the .au namespaces accurately, including the close and substantial connection test for .com.au and the restriction of .id.au to Australian citizens and residents in their personal names, and describes the owner change as a process both the current and future holder approve by email. It publishes no trustee product for .au at all.

Weakness: it is a wholesale platform, so a retail buyer reaches it through a reseller and sees no published retail price, and its silence on trustees is left to be inferred rather than stated. Full profile.

Safenames ★★★★★★★★★★

The only published contract in this field. Clause 5 sets an $800 set-up fee and $250 a year, clause 4.5 commits Safenames to relinquishing all rights of ownership when you notify a transfer of ownership, and clause 4.7 commits it to moving the domain to a registration agency you name if it can no longer hold it. Clause 11.2 permits it to register a trade mark or form a company to complete the service, which on .au is the difference between building a presence and faking one.

Weakness: clause 11.4 says anything formed under 11.2 remains the sole property of Safenames Ltd, so the trade mark that establishes your eligibility is not yours, and clause 7.9 bars you from using any Safenames agent for the same service after termination. There is also no published extension list, so .au cover has to be confirmed by enquiry. Full profile.

Com Laude ★★★★★★★★★★

A corporate domain manager that, on other registries, publishes the argument against its own local presence product: it says the registry may act against such arrangements, and that you should use a group entity or a law firm where you can. That advice transfers to .au better than anything in its price list would.

Weakness: nothing commercial is public. No .au price, no service fee, no exit process and no minimum spend, so a small buyer cannot compare it and will not get a useful quote. Full profile.

Ascio and Domgate ★★★★★★★★★★

Two wholesale operations with real substance behind them and nothing a buyer can check. Ascio sells local presence across more than two hundred restricted extensions and publishes no list, no price and no mechanism. Domgate is the rarer thing, a local presence specialist rather than a registrar with a sideline, and it names its legal entities: Boos Sarl in Grasse and Coquelicot Ltd in Dublin.

Weakness: both sell only through resellers, neither publishes whether the .au arrangement puts a partner on the registrant record, and on this registry that is the whole question. Ascio and Domgate.

BrandShelter ★★★★★★★★★★

Describes the model candidly for a corporate seller: where a domain needs a local representative it introduces a trustee and manages the trust agreement with a local partner. That is an accurate account of holder substitution, and on .au it is an accurate account of the thing paragraph 2.2.6 prohibits.

Weakness: the partner is never named, the trust agreement is not published, and no price exists in public. Full profile.

Web Solutions and EuropeID ★★★★★★★★★★

One Danish operation running two sites, and on .au both now say the same thing: registration is not available at present. EuropeID still advertises that a local agent service exists for the other Australian namespaces without pricing it or describing it.

Weakness: a withdrawn product with a live sales page around it is its own signal, and neither site explains whether the withdrawal reflects the licensing rules or something commercial. Web Solutions and EuropeID.

Intername: stay away

It sells .au at £24.50 over a two-year minimum and .com.au at £20.50, and it charges £186 a year for the local agent that makes either possible. That is by a wide margin the most expensive local agent it sells, and its own page frames the service as a way to register without meeting the registry requirements.

How to choose

1. Work out whether you already qualify. An ABN, an ACN or an Australian trade mark application settles it, and a trade mark application counts from the day it is filed rather than the day it is granted.
2. If you go the trade mark route, pick the name second. Schedule A limits you to a domain that is an exact match of the words the application covers, so the mark constrains the domain and not the other way round.
3. Ask whose name goes in the registrant field. If the answer is anyone but you, paragraph 2.2.6 says the arrangement is wrong, whatever the sales page calls it.
4. Ask who owns the qualifying vehicle. If a provider forms a company or files a trade mark for you, get in writing whose asset it is. Safenames answers this in clause 11.4, and the answer is not you.
5. Check the record after registration. The registrant is published, so the whois settles what the sales page would not. If it shows a name you do not recognise, paragraph 2.18.4 gives you fourteen days to ask for a correction.
6. Price the compliant route against five years of fees. An Australian trade mark application or a local entity is a one-off cost against a recurring one, and it leaves the licence in your name.
7. Treat a withdrawn product as information. Two of the larger sellers have pulled .au. That tells you something the ones still selling will not.

The two routes that work

An Australian trade mark application. Schedule A of the licensing rules lets the applicant or owner of an Australian trade mark rely on it to establish an Australian presence, and an application counts, so you are not waiting on examination. The catch is the exact-match rule: the domain must match the words the mark covers. For a brand registering its own name this is the cleanest route in existence, and it produces an asset you own rather than a subscription.

Registering your existing company as a foreign company. This is the route most often missed. Under Part 5B.2 of the Corporations Act an overseas company can register with ASIC as a foreign company without incorporating an Australian subsidiary, and it is issued an Australian Registered Body Number rather than an ACN. A foreign company licensed to trade in Australia is one of the eligibility categories .com.au accepts, so the ARBN qualifies you in your own name, with your own company as the registrant, which is exactly what paragraphs 2.2.6 and 2.10.1 are asking for. It carries real filing obligations, so it suits a business that intends to trade in Australia rather than one defending a name.

An Australian business number. An ABN or ACN puts you inside the eligibility categories directly and removes the question for every .au namespace at once, and a sole trader with an ABN qualifies for .com.au without any company at all. See the .au eligibility rules for what each namespace requires.

Buying an existing .au domain. Does not help by itself. A transfer of a licence still requires the incoming registrant to meet the eligibility criteria, so the presence problem arrives with the domain.

Frequently asked questions

Notes

Prices checked September 2026 as published by each provider. 101domain lists .com.au at $50.49 and $59.99 and marks trustee and proxy service as not available. Intername lists .au at £24.50 over a two-year minimum, .com.au at £20.50, and the Australian local agent at £186 a year. Web Web Solutions publishes a USD 300 agent fee covering the Australian namespaces and states that its trustee, its local branch or an agent it appoints becomes the legal holder and administrative contact, while marking both .au and .com.au ordering unavailable at the time of checking; EuropeID advertises the same service without pricing it. Netim's trustee price table covers forty-six extensions and does not include .au. Marcaria states it does not offer a trustee for .au. Safenames publishes $800 and $250 in clause 5 of its local contact terms, which are generic to all ccTLDs rather than specific to .au, so confirm cover before ordering. Com Laude, Ascio, BrandShelter, Domgate and CentralNic Reseller publish no retail figure for .au.

Rule and paragraph numbers are from the .au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing, in the version published by auDA in December 2023. This page describes how .au licensing works and how these services present themselves. It is not legal advice, and it is not a statement that any named provider is breaching the rules: several publish too little to tell which model they run, which is itself the finding.

Last updated September 2026. Prices and terms change, and two providers on this page have paused ordering while leaving the sales copy up. If you spot something wrong, email info@trusteeindex.com.