Choose a registrar you can leave without trouble

A registrar can be sold, merged or switched off

Your registrar sets its own prices and answers to ICANN, the body whose rules registrars follow. The registryRegistryThe organisation that runs an ending, like the company behind .com. It sets the rules and the price registrars pay.Read the definition, the company that runs the ending, keeps the name's record. A registrar can change owner, raise its prices or close. None of that costs you the name as long as you can still move it.

ICANN had shut down a registrar believed to hold close to 700,000 names, effective immediately, Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 15 March 2019. The registrar's website had been down for most of a week. ICANN then started the procedure that moves every name to a registrar the holders did not choose. The registrar's former chief executive later disputed Murphy's report.

Murphy wrote that most customers should suffer only minor inconvenience. The lesson Andrew Allemann drew on Domain Name Wire on 14 March 2019 was to choose a registrar you trust to stay in business.

A brand retirement is the quiet version. A registrar group that was retiring a brand of about 818,000 names said the brand's customers would move to a sister registrar, with prices and logins unchanged (Murphy, Domain Incite, 30 April 2025).

The worst version is a registrar that disappears with its records. One small registrar, in Murphy's Domain Incite report of 28 July 2021, had stopped answering ICANN in May 2020 and lost its accreditation a year later. Its successor took over up to 6,000 names and found, for many of them, little ownership data in escrowEscrowA neutral third party that holds the buyer’s money and the domain until both sides have done their part, then completes the swap. It is how large domain sales avoid either side going first.Read the definition, the backup copy ICANN requires. It asked holders for receipts or bank statements.

The first year is the advertisement

A registrar can sell the first year for less than it pays the registry. Allemann explained why on Domain Name Wire on 26 March 2025, when the .com wholesale price was $10.26: registrars were offering new names at $5.00, $5.75 and $6.99, to win customers and to earn the registry's growth rebates.

The money comes back at renewal. One large registrar's .com list priceList priceThe price a registrar publishes for an ending, before any coupon or bundle. It is what anyone pays who simply adds the name to the cart.Read the definition, which Allemann traced on Domain Name Wire on 20 August 2024, went from $14.99 in 2014 to $21.99 in 2024, a 47% rise in ten years. The same article noted that .com renewal rates after the first year can be below 50%. The first-year discount is a bet that you stay.

Allemann had put it plainly on Domain Name Wire on 18 August 2020: never choose a registrar on price alone, and check what the name renews for.

Across the registrars we price, the median first year of .com is $11.62, and its median renewal is $13.40. Our renewal trapRenewal trapA cheap first year followed by a renewal at least twice the first year and at least $10 more. The low price wins the sale, and the yearly fee afterwards is where the cost really is.Read the definition flag marks a registrar's price when the renewal costs at least twice the first-year price and at least ten dollars above it.

On 9 November 2026, none of the 9 registrars we price carried that flag on .com, 4 of the 9 did on .co, and 3 of the 8 that price .me did.

Sixty days locked, then five days to release

A move from one registrar to another is called a transfer, and ICANN's transfer policy of 2016 sets its rules. Your registrar may refuse a transfer in the first 60 days after the name was created. It may also refuse one in the 60 days after a previous transfer.

Your registrar must refuse a transfer for 60 days after a change of the holder's name or organization that goes beyond fixing a typo, or any change of the holder's email, unless you took an opt-out the registrar offered beforehand. Outside those windows, the registrar cannot hold back a paid-up name over a future bill or a disputed payment.

If your account gives you no way to unlock the name and read the transfer codeTransfer codeThe secret code your current registrar gives you so a new registrar can take a name over. Also called an auth code or an authorization code.Read the definition yourself, your registrar must do both within five calendar days of your request.

Once the new registrar sends its request, your old registrar has five calendar days to object, and its silence counts as approval. Cloudflare's registrar documentation of 29 October 2026 puts a move to Cloudflare at about 30 minutes of your work and up to ten days in all.

A transfer is not money lost. Under the same policy it adds one year to the name's term, up to ten years in all, so the transfer fee is a renewal paid at the new registrar. Cloudflare lists exceptions: a .uk transfer adds no year, and a name that was renewed after it expired, then moved within 45 days of the old expiry date, may get no added year.

These locks are changing. ICANN's policy council voted, pending the board's approval, to drop the lock after a change of holder and to require a 30-day lock after a registration or a transfer in. Kevin Murphy, who reported the vote on Domain Incite on 13 March 2025, reckoned on at least 18 months before the change went live.

Four settings that keep the door open

Two-factor loginTwo-factor loginA login that asks for a second step after your password, such as a physical key or a code from an app. It keeps a stolen password from opening your account.Read the definition asks for a second step after your password. Andrew Allemann called it a must on Domain Name Wire on 25 March 2022, and called a registrar without it a reason to move your names. The same article asked for it on the email account behind the login too, since thieves often get in there, and preferred a physical key to a text message or an app.

The transfer lockTransfer lockA setting that stops a name from being moved to another registrar. The owner turns it off at their registrar before a sale or a move.Read the definition, the setting that refuses any move, stays on. What matters is that you can lift it yourself. If a registrar needs a ticket or a call before it lifts the lock or gives you the code, you will leave it slowly.

Keep the name's DNSDNSThe system that turns a domain name into the address of the machine serving the site. Its records also show whether a name runs a real site, an email service, or nothing at all.Read the definition, the records that point the name at your site and your mail, at a provider that is not your registrar. A transfer changes the registrar that manages the name, not those records, so your site and your mail keep running through the move.

Bundles make a move hard. Some commerce and site-building platforms that register a name do not let you change its nameserversNameserverThe server that answers for a domain on the internet, telling browsers and mail where to go. Changing it moves the site or the mail to another host.Read the definition, where its DNS lives (Cloudflare's documentation, 29 October 2026). Because Cloudflare needs the name on its nameservers first, moving there from such a platform takes two transfers 60 days apart. One large registrar may reject the transfer, the documentation warns, until its privacy and protection add-ons are off.

One account for every name

Put every name the company holds in one account at one registrar. The Better Business Bureau's advice, which OnlineDomain relayed on 27 February 2014, was to use one provider and one account, so that a fake invoice for a name you never bought stands out, and to put more than one contact person on the registration.

Scattered names renew on different cards, and their warnings go to different mailboxes. A message about your name may not come from your registrar at all, Allemann added on Domain Name Wire on 1 June 2022. With one account, the real mails are easier to spot.

What the registrar pages show and leave out

Registrars, on the website, compares the registrars we price, ending by ending: the first year, the renewal, the transfer-inTransfer-inWhat a registrar charges to bring a name you already own over from another registrar.Read the definition price and the renewal trap flag. Each day it shows 40 endings, drawn afresh and listed alphabetically. It also shows the 10 newest confirmed price changes and 8 rows that carry the trap flag, with the trap count, and it answers one ending lookup a day.

A registrar's profile shows its own rows among those 40. We count a price change as confirmed when the new price reads the same twice, at least 20 hours apart, and has moved by at least 10% and at least a dollar. This rule of ours keeps a one-day coupon out of a table of the renewals you will pay. Registrars sit in catalog order and are never ranked.

We have no opinion on a registrar's support, and we hold no registrar reviews. The pages read what a registrar publishes, not how long a ticket waits. Test the registrar yourself with one cheap name before the company's name follows: register it, turn on two-factor login, lift the lock, read the transfer code, and time each step.

Before you open the account

• Read the renewal price for your ending before you read the first-year price.
• First, find the unlock switch and the transfer code in the registrar's help pages.
• Turn on two-factor login, with a physical key if one is offered, at the registrar and on the email account behind it.
• Keep the DNS at a provider that is not the registrar.
• Register the name on its own, apart from any site builder, hosting plan or protection add-on.
• Put every name in one account at one registrar, with two contact people.
• Keep the invoices where a second person can find them.
• Register where you mean to stay for at least sixty days, and renew before a move, never after the name has expired.