May 7, 2004

11:14 AM

I am in the process of purchasing a domain from it's current owner. What's the easiest way to transfer it to my own account?
posted by renyoj to (4 comments total)

Are you transferring to a different registrar?
posted by anathema at 12:02 PM on May 7, 2004

I would like to, but if it would be much easier to transfer within the same registrar, I am open to that.
posted by renyoj at 12:07 PM on May 7, 2004

Transfer procedures depend greatly on the registrar. For Network Solutions, it's "send them a notarized form and $200 unless you want to wait two months." For GoDaddy it's "push the domain to the other guy's account."
posted by kindall at 12:34 PM on May 7, 2004

When we bought a domain from a reseller, we had a weird little blip. Basically the registrar -- who I don't even remember, not one of the biggies -- changed us to the technical, billing and admin contacts but the *owner* of the domain remained the guy who sold it to us. I only found that out after trying to switch the domain to our preferred registrar [Gandi] and we didn't have permission to do so. Of course, transferring ownership at this fly-by-night registrar only involved sending an email to the admin contact [me] who then had to confirm it. It was all a bit complex, though understandable, and if the domain had been expiring in a day or two, it might have been enough of a hassle that it would have been a problem. As it was, it was merely annoying.

So my advice is, if you know the person who is selling it to you, stay with their registrar, get everything in your name for sure [however that needs to happen, as folks have said YMMV] and then worry about getting it to your favorite registrar. This may cost a bit of cash since you'lll have to pay registrar number two for a year's registration which is what you already paid registrar number one for, but it's still in the $10-30US category which isn't much to make sure there are no gaping "oops, I lost the domain" holes.
posted by jessamyn at 12:49 PM on May 7, 2004