Transfer domain to another registrar

Support
,
#1

Hi Netlify Team,

I have bought a domain through your domain tool and now I want to transfer the domain to another registrar. I know that you have explained how to do it on your support site but this process has some drawbacks and I wanted to ask if there is another way?

That said the issue I have with registering an account on name.com is that I will loose the WHOIS protection, which I currently have, when I transfer the domain to name.com since that service will cost money on name.com. Furthermore name.com is not the registrar I want to go with in the end, so it will only be the “man in the middle” of transferring the domain.

Therefore I would like to ask if it is possible to transfer the domain while it is still handled by you to the other registrar which is not name.com ? I would really appreciate if this is possible since the process you have described on your support page has the drawbacks I mentioned above. I also understand that this is not the usual way of doing it, but still I wanted to ask if it possible.

Another question in this regard would be, what happens if I let the domain expire. Is it possible to buy it again from another registrar ?

I am really looking forward to hear from you.

Best regards,
Alex

#2

@alexanderwe I don’t completely understand your question, because you seem to want to transfer both to and away from name.com. I’m guessing that your domain (which you don’t specify) is currently registered with Name.com, and you want to transfer it to another registrar – which you also do not specify.

The best way to do this is with a direct transfer from Name.com to your registrar of choice, not through other registrars. Some registrars do not allow the retransfer of a domain name within – say – 90 days, so you may be inducing a big delay doing it any other way.

To answer your other question, if you let your domain name expire you risk losing it or having to pay a small fortune to get it back. First, you have to wait for the domain registration to expire and then go through the one-month grace period, which could be a long time, depending on when your registered initially. Second, trying to obtain that some domain name from another registrar will NOT be seen as a re-registration because the other registrar will have no record of your association with that domain name. Some registrars “hang onto” expired domain names and sell them at massive prices because after expiration, they can become the owner of those names and they know there’s a demand for that name because someone (you, in this case) was just using it.

I have never used Name.com so I don’t know the transfer protocol, but transferring domain registration these days is MUCH easier than it used to be, so there shouldn’t be a problem doing what you want.

Feel free to supply clarification or more details if this doesn’t make sense.

#3

Hey Alex,

Firstly, we’re not a registrar. We are a Name.com reseller. When you buy a domain through us, we have an account at Name.com and the domain ‘lives’ here.

If you want to move the domain away from Netlify, you need to take ownership of the domain under your own Name.com account. Then, you can take it wherever you like.

There is no way to avoid the middle step, I’m afraid.

As for domain expiration – when a domain expires, it gets held for (I believe, from memory) 90 days before it’s subject to deletion. If you plan on keeping a name… I’d advise against letting it lapse! It’s not a clean-cut process.

#4

Thanks a lot @gregraven and @Pie for trying to answer my question.

@Pie Okay, so the way I wanted it to be is sadly not possible, but thanks a lot for taking care. Then I think I will go through the normal transferring process and will not let the domain expire.

Thanks !