IDN stands for Internationalized Domain Names, which translates as “internationalized domains”. In practice, the most commonly used term is “domains with alphabetic characters“, and it is these types of domains that we will be discussing in this post. We’ll look at what their advantages and disadvantages are, and what their use looks like in practice.

What are IDNs?

These are domains that use characters other than the letters a to z, the numbers 0 to 9 or hyphens in the name. For Slovenian domain names, you can use the letters č, š, ž and prepositions. IDN domains support Chinese characters, Cyrillic characters and other scripts in addition to Latin characters.

Beware, however, that some domain extensions only support certain IDN characters in the domain name, and some support no IDN characters at all. Some of the most popular ones that support IDN characters are .COM, .NET, .ORG, .SI, .EU, .DE, etc. You can find out if your domain supports IDN characters by visiting our website. Check the domain price list and select the domain you want from the list in the side menu.

What do IDNs look like in practice?

DNS hosting handles the conversion of a domain to an IP address and vice versa. This type of hosting only recognises ASCII characters, which do not include alphabets, which means that direct use of IDN domains is not possible. IDN domains therefore need to be converted to an ACE string(ASCII Compatible Encoding). This is done using the Punycode system, where domains are given the prefix“xn--“. Let’s look at some examples of IDN domains in practice:

What are the advantages of registering an IDN domain?

Using IDN characters, you can present yourself in an original way to web users who do not use English as their primary language. Take, for example, a domain name that you want to use to present yourself in your local market:

For Slovenian speakers, the first domain is more memorable. It’s also easier to say over the phone than a domain without the use of an acronym.

Another advantage is that there are significantly fewer domains registered with IDN characters than those that don’t use them. Therefore, it is more likely that the domain you want is still available.

What are the disadvantages of registering an IDN domain?

The first problem arises when someone from abroad wants to visit your website. Often you get stuck with the character set on the keyboard, because without the appropriate alphanumeric characters, e.g. a visitor from Germany will find it difficult to access your site by typing in the URL address.

Although the use of IDN characters has been around for a long time, in most cases web users have not got used to them. If you were to tell an interlocutor that your domain is “računanje.si”, there is a high probability that the user would type “racunanje.si” into a web browser.

Older versions of browsers will in some cases convert the domain IDN to an ACE string, so that the domain “računanje.si” will appear as “xn--raunanje-lbb.si” in a search engine.

Sometimes email servers do not recognise IDN domains, so it is inappropriate to use them to create email inboxes. Please check below which email programs do or do not support the use of IDN domains.

Email programs that support the use of IDN domains:

• Microsoft Outlook 2007 and later,
• Apple Mail (on macOS 10.5 Leopard and later),
• Mozilla Thunderbird 24 and later versions,
• iPhone Mail,
• Opera 9 and later versions.

Programs that do not support the use of IDN domains:

• Windows Mail on Microsoft Vista,
• Windows Live Mail on Microsoft XP and Vista,
• Windows Live Hotmail,
• Samsung Galaxy on Android,
• Microsoft Entourage.

For applications that do not support the use of IDN domains, these must be converted to an ACE string.