.to

Overview

• .to is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Kingdom of Tonga.
• Introduced 18 December 1995 and administered by the Tonga Network Information Center (Tonic) under the Government of Tonga.
• The two-letter string "to" doubles as an English preposition and part of words, making it popular for domain hacks, URL shorteners and memorable redirects.

History

• Delegated and active since 18 December 1995.
• The registry is operated by the Tonga Network Information Center (Tonic) with sponsorship from the Government of Tonga.
• The .to space was commercialized in 1997 by a San Francisco company (Tonic Corp.) with approval from Tongan royalty; domain processing historically involved the Tongan consulate in San Francisco.
• The TLD had an A record and an HTTP server since at least 1998.
• Register.TO was a registrar that supported emoji and other registrations; it is no longer an authorized registrar following the death of its owner in early 2023, as noted by the NIC of Tonga.

Usage and Audience

• Open registrations and the short, meaningful string have made .to attractive to a wide global audience rather than only Tonga-based entities.
• Common uses:
  • Domain hacks and creative URLs (leveraging the word "to").
  • URL shorteners and redirection services.
  • Torrent aggregators and other file‑sharing / streaming sites.
  • Tech startups and city-related uses ("T.O." as a nickname for Toronto; used also for Torino/Turin).
  • Slavic-language sites where "to" means "it" or "that" (e.g., uloz.to).
• The registry also allows emoji domain names.

Registration Rules

• Open to anyone; registrations are permitted at the second level.
• Some third-level labels (for example .gov.to, .edu.to) are restricted to legitimate Tongan institutions.
• The registry permits Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and, per registry statements, allows domain names containing any Unicode code point.
• Certain trademarked names are reserved and the registry may remove registrations used for spam, phishing, fraud or other activities it deems inappropriate or illegal.
• The .to zone does not maintain a public WHOIS database; contact with registrants is possible through the tonic.to domain search/contact mechanism.
• The registry has allowed promotional measures such as free domains for Tonga-registered businesses and commission arrangements for sellers.

SEO and Brand Impact

• The lack of a public WHOIS has made .to attractive to sites seeking more registrant privacy, contributing to its use by some unlicensed streaming or piracy sites and torrent aggregators.
• Because .to is widely used for domain hacks and short memorable domains, it can be favorable for branding and URL memorability when used legitimately.
• The registry does not require registered sites to display ads on behalf of the registrar.

Notable Cases or Examples

• isoHunt operated a mirror/instance as isohunt.to.
• cr.yp.to (Daniel J. Bernstein) and p.ota.to (formerly used by Potato, a London web company) are examples of creative domain hacks.
• uloz.to is an example in Czech/Slovak where the domain reads as a phrase meaning "save it."

% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

domain:       TO

organisation: Government of the Kingdom of Tonga, H.R.H. Crown Prince Tupouto'a, c/o Consulate of Tonga
address:      1350 Bayshore Hwy
address:      Suite 610
address:      Burlingame CA 94010
address:      United States of America (the)

contact:      administrative
name:         Eric Gullichsen
organisation: Government of the Kingdom of Tonga
organisation: H.R.H. Crown Prince Tupouto'a
organisation: c/o Consulate of Tonga
address:      1350 Bayshore Hwy
address:      Suite 610
address:      Burlingame CA 94010
address:      United States of America (the)
phone:        +1 415 462 3014
fax-no:       +1 415 789 0522
e-mail:       egullich@colo.to

contact:      technical
name:         Eric Gullichsen
organisation: Government of the Kingdom of Tonga
organisation: H.R.H. Crown Prince Tupouto'a
organisation: c/o Consulate of Tonga
address:      1350 Bayshore Hwy
address:      Suite 610
address:      Burlingame CA 94010
address:      United States of America (the)
phone:        +1 415 462 3014
fax-no:       +1 415 789 0522
e-mail:       egullich@colo.to

nserver:      NS01.TRS-DNS.COM 2620:57:4001:0:0:0:0:1 64.96.1.1
nserver:      NS01.TRS-DNS.NET 2620:57:4002:0:0:0:0:1 64.96.2.1
nserver:      NS10.TRS-DNS.INFO 2620:171:812:1534:8:0:0:1 64.78.204.1
nserver:      NS10.TRS-DNS.ORG 2620:171:813:1534:8:0:0:1 64.78.205.1

whois:        whois.tonicregistry.to

status:       ACTIVE
remarks:      Registration information: http://www.tonic.to/

created:      1995-12-18
changed:      2025-08-21
source:       IANA