Buying the name and putting a website on it are two different jobs. PKNIC is the registry for .pk. It is not your host.

This guide explains what the official pages say about nameservers, then the practical sequence we use when someone wants the domain to point at ordinary web hosting or at Cloudflare.

What PKNIC does and does not provide

PKNIC’s FAQ is direct: PKNIC does not provide any website or email hosting services. It operates the .pk root servers so registered names can work on the internet.

The services page adds that PKNIC does not provide DNS services to applicants, and does not provide technical tutorials about how to set up nameservers, DNS programmes, or general internet topics. It also does not offer names of the form www.example.com.pk as a separate registration — www is a sub-domain you create with your DNS host.

Domain names are not required to have pre-configured name servers at registration. That is why a name can be fully registered, and still show “None Specified (or deleted)” on the public lookup, with no website. An empty DNS record does not mean the name is free; see what “domain available” means.

Competitor pages (for example Domain.pk’s registration notes) often warn that a .pk name does not include free DNS management or forwarding, and that you only enter nameservers. That matches the official “PKNIC is not a host” rule, but the official source for the registry itself remains the PKNIC pages above.

The usual sequence

  1. Register the domain in the holder’s name, or confirm it is already registered. On BuyPKDomain that is the order form at Rs 4,200 for 2 years for a Pakistan registrant — see the price page.
  2. Get two (or more) nameserver hostnames from your DNS host. A web host will typically give you values such as ns1.examplehost.com and ns2.examplehost.com. Cloudflare gives you a pair such as name.ns.cloudflare.com (the exact pair is unique to your Cloudflare account). Copy them carefully; a typo will leave the domain unpointed.
  3. Set those nameservers at the registry, in the PKNIC account that holds the name. PKNIC documents a My Domains ⇒ Manage Domains area of the account for domain tasks (the renew-domain page uses that menu for invoices). It does not publish a public, click-by-click nameserver tutorial. If we registered the name for you, send the exact nameservers to info@buypkdomain.pk or WhatsApp Support and we will help you have them set. Do not invent menu labels we have not seen on an official page.
  4. Wait for the registry and then the rest of the internet to update. PKNIC’s FAQ says that once the registry system has been updated, the information is shared with the internet’s zone files, that those files are propagated frequently, every few hours, and that generally the domain should be available to users within a very short period. It also says PKNIC cannot control how quickly the millions of servers on the internet update. There is no official “it will be live in X hours” figure on that page, so we will not invent one.
  5. Create the actual DNS records at the nameserver host, not at PKNIC. That is the A record or CNAME for www and the root, plus MX records if you want email. PKNIC is only holding the delegation — the list of nameservers.

Pointing a .pk domain at Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a common choice, and it is the path we use for this site’s own zone when the nameservers are changed at PKNIC. The order of operations matters:

  1. Add yourname.pk (or yourname.com.pk) to a Cloudflare account as a zone, before you expect traffic to flow through it.
  2. Cloudflare will show you two assigned nameservers. Copy both.
  3. Set those two nameservers on the domain at PKNIC (or ask us to).
  4. Wait until the official lookup and public DNS show the new nameservers. A May 2026 discussion on r/PakistaniTech described exactly this setup — a .pk name, GitHub Pages, and Cloudflare — and the useful advice from other users was that a .pk nameserver update can take time. The original poster later reported that it worked. That thread is a community report, not a PKNIC SLA.
  5. Only then add A, AAAA or CNAME records, and any email records, inside Cloudflare.

If Cloudflare is still asking you to “check nameservers” after a short period, re-check the spelling of the two nameservers on the PKNIC side and look the domain up on PKNIC’s WHOIS. If the registry still shows the old list, the change has not been stored yet. If the registry already shows Cloudflare but some resolvers do not, you are in ordinary DNS caching, which PKNIC says it cannot control.

Pointing a .pk domain at ordinary web hosting

The same five-step sequence applies. Take the nameservers (or, less commonly, the A-record IP addresses if your host asks you to use their DNS) from the hosting panel. If the host wants you to use their nameservers, those are what you set at PKNIC. If the host wants you to keep DNS at Cloudflare and only create an A record, you set Cloudflare’s nameservers at PKNIC and the A record at Cloudflare.

PKNIC will not create a www name for you. Your DNS host will.

If something still fails

  • Confirm the domain is actually registered and not past the two-week post-expiry hold.
  • Confirm the nameservers on the official lookup match what you intended.
  • Confirm the A or CNAME records exist at the DNS host, including for www if you need it.
  • If PKNIC ever rejects a nameserver change, the public pages do not give a detailed error catalogue. Some registries reject nameservers that are not yet authoritative for the zone; we have not found that test documented on a current PKNIC help page, so treat it as a possibility to check with us, not as a quoted official rule.

When you write to us, include the domain, the two nameservers, and your order number if you have one. Search or order a .pk name if you do not already hold one.