How to Transfer a Domain Between Registrars

Before you start: the lock periods

Two rules block most attempted transfers. A domain cannot move within sixty days of initial registration, and it cannot move within sixty days of a change to the registrant contact details. The second catches people constantly — updating your email address to prepare for a transfer is precisely what prevents it. Check the domain's status first, and if a lock applies, wait it out rather than fighting it.

The five steps

Unlock the domain in your current registrar's control panel, which is a setting usually labelled transfer lock or registrar lock. Request the authorisation code, sometimes called an EPP code or auth code. Start the transfer at the new registrar and supply that code. Approve the transfer when the confirmation email arrives. Then wait — the transfer typically completes within five days, and often faster if the losing registrar does not delay it.

Keep your site and email up

A transfer moves who manages the domain, not where it points, so DNS records normally survive. The risk is that some registrars replace nameservers with their own defaults on completion, which takes a site and email offline immediately. Record your current DNS settings before starting — nameservers, A records, MX records — so you can restore them if they change. Better still, set the same nameservers at the new registrar before the transfer completes.

You keep the time you paid for

A transfer does not forfeit your remaining registration term. The standard behaviour is that the transfer fee adds a year to the existing expiry, so a name with eight months left becomes one with twenty. This is why transferring is not wasted money even mid-term: you are buying a year of registration at the new registrar's price, and moving at the same time.

Why a transfer gets refused

The common reasons, in rough order of frequency: the domain is inside a sixty-day lock; the transfer lock is still on; the authorisation code is wrong or expired; the administrative email on the WHOIS record is out of date, so the confirmation never arrives; or the domain is expired or in redemption. Each has a specific fix and none is mysterious — check them in that order before contacting support.

Timing it around a sale

If you are selling the name, transfer timing matters more than usual. A buyer cannot move a name you have just acquired or just updated, and a sixty-day lock can stall a completed sale for two months. Where both parties use the same registrar, an internal push sidesteps the whole problem. If you intend to sell a name, avoid touching the registrant details in the weeks beforehand.