Register Italian Domain

How to register an Italian .it domain

The TLD (top level domain, the letters after the last dot in a website’s URL, or address) for Italy is .IT. Italian websites usually end in .it and if your business is located in Italy, or has a strong relevance in Italy, you may want to get a .it domain. This will tell customers that your site is about Italy and Italian language will – likely – be the default language. Many foreign businesses try to secure an .it domain in order to create a catchy play in words between the .it TLD and the “it” pronoun, like “www.whereis.it” and “www.rate.it”.

While securing a .it domain seems the natural choice for your Italy or Rome based business, be aware that the registration procedure of a .it domain is slightly different and a little more complex than that of almost any other domain, thanks to Italian bureaucracy.
After you have purchased your .it domain name through an authorized registrar or maintainer (you can easily find a list searching on google), you are required to write a Letter of Ownership (in Italian LAR: Lettera di Assunzione Responsabilità) and fax it or mail it to the Italian .it register maintainer, the NIC.

The Letter of Assumption of Responsibility (LAR) is the document with which you can request the registration of a .it domain. There are two forms for the LAR: for "natural persons" (without a VAT number) and for "persons other than individuals" (institutions, companies, trade associations, individual with a VAT number, etc).
Each LAR form is divided into five parts:

personal and tax details of the entity requesting the domain and the tag of the Maintainer that will be completing the registration; clauses relating to the use of the domain and the undertaking of responsibilities by the applicant; information on the protection of personal data; explicit consent to the processing of personal data and those data necessary needed to make them available and accessible via the Internet; express resolution clauses.

You can find a template of LAR in English and Italian on the NIC website.
Starting from September 2009, this byzantine system will be updated and you’ll be able to register an Italian domain online and in much quicker times than the current ones, but until then, you’ll have to deal with Italy’s asynchronous registration system.

Remember: the paperwork doesn’t end with the registration of the domain. Should you decide to change your maintainer, you’ll have to send to the NIC a communication of change of maintainer.

Registering and managing a .com, .net, .info or any other TLD is much easier and many small business choose this route. International enterprises often do not register a .it domain, but manage their Italian pages under a subdomain (like italy.businessname.com) or folder (like www.businessname.com/italy)