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Friday 29 April 2016

How to change your domain name registrar

First, why would you want to do that? In my case, it was cost. Network Solutions wanted $25 per year for a renewal; Godaddy is about half that. So what follows, is - How to chenge your registrar from Network Solutions to GoDaddy. Other transfers would be similar.

Why was I with Network Solutions in the first place? Well, in 1996, when I set this stuff up, Godaddy didn't exist, Network Solutions was the only registrar I knew about, and setting it up involved and extremely complex and hair-raising exchange of carefully formatted emails. Today, it's all done using their web sites, and it's all a lot easier.

Part one is a bit of a dance you do with Network Solutions, part 2 is another dance with GoDaddy.

First, I needed to go to Network Solutions to start the process. I logged in to their web site, went to "manage account". Under "My Domain Names", use the drop down menu to choose the domain name you're going to transfer, and click "Go". Then you need to change the "transfer lock" to "off". Then click on "request authorisation code"

At that point, they insulted me by offering a "special renewal rate". In my case, they offered £7.01 for a year. I thought about that for about one second, and then I thought, no, if you wanted to keep my business, you should have offered me that rate in the first place. I *really* dislike an organisation that behaves like this. So I continued with the request.

But I notice that they've changed the renewal price for my other domain names to £7.01. For 1 year, £7.01. For two years £53.28. Not nice.  I'll be moving those when renewal comes up.

Three days later, they sent me an email with the authorization code to do the transfer.

Next, go to the Godaddy web site. Log on, and buy a transfer to your domain name. You'll get a year for a very low price - I paid $8.17, about £5. They send you an email with two codes, so now you have three codes.

Now, go to the Godaddy home page, and log on. Next to Domains, click Manage. From the Domains menu, select Transfers. Select the domain name, and then click Restart Transfer. Then you give it the three codes that you've gathered, and that should be it.

The transfer can take up to seven days. I suppose it hasn't occurred to anyone that if they used computers and the internet, it could be done in seconds.

Godaddy are charging me $54.95 for 5 years - compare that with Network Solutions £53.28 for two years, and you can see why I changed registrars.

Note to self - remember to check that the DNS settings transferred.







2 comments:

  1. Yes, Network Solutions is a ripoff. I dumped them for GoDaddy 15 years ago.

    GoDaddy is truly awful. I used them for years because they were cheap but was very weary of the endless sleeve-clutching efforts to sell more stuff as one checks out. The boycott over the elephant slaughter (you can google it) pushed me to dump them in favour of namecheap. It was like getting out of kindergarten with crayon drawings on the wall into a dignified classroom. Just better in every way, and cheap.

    GoDaddy, unlike Namecheap, has some form in putting obstacles in the way of people wanting to move domains.

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  2. I checked. Their price is £7.31 per year, pretty much the same as godaddy.
    I don't mind the sleeve-clutching, it's pretty quick to click your way past it.

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