.ελ tld is here

According to Greek Authority, .ελ tld (with Greek Characters) released at 10th of July 2018 08:00 am UTC and more new domains are available to everyone. At the same time, all current registrants of .gr domains are able to protect their domains by activating the exact same domain under .ελ tld, as well as its homographs, if they prefer to.

.ελ domains were released in 2 phases, as described below.

1st Phase: 3 months of limited availability

Since 10th of July 2018 and for 3 months, any domain is already registered under .gr will not be available for registration for everyone. Only the registrant of the same .gr will be able to activate it and only under the same registrar. The same goes for its homographs.
Example: Domain ite.gr is already registered by John Doe via IpHost as registrar. The first 3 months of .ελ release, domain name ite.ελ will be able to be registered only by John Doe and only via IpHost as registrar. In addition, John Doe will be able to register ιτε.ελ which is homograph of ite (you can find more about homographs here)
However, this rule includes the below exceptions:

Case 1: Different registrants of homographs
Right now Greek Regulation defines that the registrant of a .gr domain is the only one that can register/activate every homograph (either in Latin or in Greek characters) of their domain or domains. However, this was not always the case. So, there might be homographs that belong to different registrants. In the example above, if ιτε.gr belongs to a different registrant and not to John Doe, then none of the registrants can register ite.ελ during the first 3 months. So, they will have to wait these 3 months to pass and try to register ite.ελ. The faster will win!

Case 2: Different registrants of.gr domains second and third level (third level = .com.gr , .net.gr, .org.gr, .edu.gr)
In this case, the registrant of .gr domain has the priority to register the exact same domain or its homograph under .ελ tld during the first 3 months.
Example: Domain ite.gr is already registered by John Doe and ite.com.gr is registered by another registrant, then only John Doe will be able to register ite.ελ or/and its homograph ιτε.ελ.

Case 3: Third level domain is registered and the same .gr is free for registration
In this case, the same .ελ domain will be available for registration to all registrants of the exact same third level .gr domains.
Example: Domain ite.com.gr is registered by John Doe and ite.net.gr is registered by George Smith. Both of them will be able to register ite.ελ or/and its homograph ιτε.ελ. The fastest one will get the domain.

Case 4: The same second or third level .gr domains are available for registration
In this case, the same .ελ domain is available for registration from everyone with no limitation.

2nd Phase: Free availability

After the first 3 months, every .ελ domain that has not been registered is free for registration for everyone, the same as .gr tld is now.

 

Don’t lose the opportunity to register your Greek internet presence with your .ελ domain!

If you already have your .gr domains to IpHost as registrar, just click “Register .ελ” option appearing next to each .gr domain name in your domain list.

In case of homographs, please contact us to activate the same .ελ domain.