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Last updated: 2026-11-13
Version: 2.34

# Register and secure your name in ten minutes

Pay the first year, make the company the owner, turn on auto-renew and two-factor login, and leave the transfer lock on. Everything else can wait until launch.

Course: Name your company
Chapter 7 of 12, 13 min read
Published 2026-11-09, reviewed 2026-11-13.

You have chosen the name. The registrar, the company that sells it, has its checkout open, and the first year may cost less than a lunch. In ten minutes the name can belong to the company, renew on its own, refuse any transfer and sit behind a two-factor login. Or it can sit in a developer's account, paid with one card, with its recovery email on the name itself.

By the end you can register a name so that the company holds it. You can set the six settings that decide whether you still hold the name in five years, and you can read the official record back in WHOIS to check your work. You also know what to write when someone else registered the name for you.

## What you will be able to do

- You can say at which moment a name becomes yours, and why a cart does not hold it for you.
- You can put the company on the record and in control of the account from the first minute.
- You can set auto-renew, two-factor login and the recovery email so that a failed card does not cost you the name.
- You can read the transfer lock and the expiry date in WHOIS and say what each status code means.

## Pay first: nothing else holds a name

Registering is the short part. Cloudflare's registrar documentation of 2026 says the process may take up to 30 seconds to complete. At Cloudflare, a definitive availability check runs when you press Purchase, and most endings can be registered for up to ten years. The name is yours when the order completes, and not before.

Nothing else holds a name for you, not even a cart. A trending name that is open in the morning can be registered by someone else the same day, Elliot Silver wrote on DomainInvesting on 16 April 2025. Some investors register dozens or hundreds of keyword names in one sweep. In Silver's view, that is competition, and not the registrar taking the name you searched.

So register the name the moment you decide on it, before you announce it, pitch it or file a trademark. In Unique Domains, the Register button on an open name opens the registrar's own page for that name in a new tab. We register nothing ourselves: the registrar's completed order makes the name yours.

## The company holds the name in its own account

The holder of a name is whoever the record names. The registry, the company that runs the ending, keeps that record. ICANN, the body whose rules registrars follow, calls this holder the registrant and lists the registrant's duties in its 2013 statement.

Under ICANN's 2013 statement, the registrant has sole responsibility for the name and keeps the contact details accurate. The registrant also answers the registrar within fifteen days, and keeps the payment details current when auto-renew is on.

Put the company on that record, with a company email. Keep the login in the company's hands as well: store it in a password manager that both founders can open, never in one mailbox. On Domain Name Wire on 20 September 2017, Andrew Allemann drew two lessons from a hijacking case: never register the name in an employee's name, and give the login a security protocol.

Fixing the record later has a cost. Under ICANN's transfer policy of 2016, a change to the registrant's name, organization or email that goes beyond fixing a typo counts as a change of registrant.

After a change of registrant, the registrar must block any move to another registrar for sixty days under ICANN's transfer policy of 2016, unless the registrar offered an opt-out and you took it beforehand. That is why the company goes on the record at the first registration.

## Case: A $10,000 ransom for a company's own name

- Demanded for the name: $10,000
- Restitution ordered: $9,000
- From his renewal to the login request: 2011 to 2015
- Sentence: four years of probation

Andrew Allemann reported the sentencing of a former employee of an IT company in Phoenix (Domain Name Wire, 20 September 2017). In 2011 the former employee had renewed the company's registrar account. In 2015 the company asked him for the login, so that it could update its contact details. According to the former employee's plea statement, he told the company that he did not have it.

The former employee then changed the account's contact details several times, redirected the website and broke the email. He asked the company for $10,000 to give the name back. When the company refused, he pointed the name at a pornography site. A court sentenced the former employee to four years of probation and $9,000 in restitution.

In figures, four years passed between the renewal of 2011 and the company's request for its own login in 2015. The ransom was $10,000 for the company's own name. The restitution, $9,000, was ordered in September 2017.

The lesson is Allemann's. The name belongs on the company's record and never on an employee's. Someone has to hold the login, and that login needs a protocol.

Source: Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Man sentenced for hijacking company’s domain name and demanding $10,000", 2017-09-20, https://domainnamewire.com/2017/09/20/domain-ransom/

## Auto-renew is a retry on a card

Auto-renew is a scheduled charge and nothing more. Cloudflare's registrar documentation of 2026 describes Cloudflare's own auto-renew, which is on by default. The first attempt comes 30 days before expiry, several more follow if it fails, and the last comes the day before expiry. A failure brings an email and three further tries. The documentation gives no guarantee of success, since cards fail and registries go down.

The warnings are emails, and all of them go to the address on the record. ICANN's expired-names policy of 2013 requires two notices before expiry, one about a month ahead and one about a week ahead. It requires one more notice within five days after expiry.

ICANN's expired-names policy of 2013 also requires a way to renew for as long as the registrar still holds the name. After deletion, the registry of a generic ending offers thirty days of redemption, during which the name can be restored for a fee.

So pay for years ahead and keep the card current. Few people do. Most customers at all registrars choose one year, Andrew Allemann read in one registrar's quarterly report (Domain Name Wire, 3 August 2026). Even on .dev, which is that registrar's leading ending for multi-year orders, only 5% of registrations ran past one year.

When a name is lost this way, the story is an ordinary one. The Virginia Department of Health let VirginiaWIC.com expire after the employee in charge of renewing it left earlier in 2026, Domain Name Wire reported on 24 September 2026. A new registrant forwards the name to adult sites, and the state has sued.

## Case: Auto-renew failed, and blockchain.ai's auction closed at $405,000

- Expired: 19 July 2025
- Noticed: 21 September 2025
- Auction close: $405,000
- Yearly renewal of .ai: $84.15

On Domain Name Wire on 12 October 2025, Andrew Allemann reported that an auction of the expired name blockchain.ai had ended at $405,000, and that the name's former holder had filed a lawsuit the day before. The former holder states that he was the registrant as of December 2017, with auto-renew on at his registrar. The renewal failed, and the name expired on 19 July 2025.

The former holder says he learned on 21 September that the renewal had failed, paid his registrar and received a confirmation. On 3 October, he says, the invoice still showed as pending, and the name sat in an auction run by a partner of the .ai registry, Identity Digital.

On 6 October the registrar asked for a restoration fee too. The former holder alleges that he paid it, and that the name still went to pending delete, the status before deletion. His lawyer contacted the registry on 8 October. The auction ran on, and the lawsuit followed. The article does not say how it ended.

Here is the arithmetic. Sixty-four days passed between the expiry on 19 July and the day the former holder noticed. The yearly renewal of .ai across the registrars we price is $84.15. The auction closed at $405,000.

The lesson is that auto-renew is an attempt to charge a card, and even a confirmation is not the registry's record. Check that the renewal landed by reading the expiry date WHOIS shows. And pay for years ahead, so that a card that fails in July does not end in an auction in October.

Source: Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Blockchain.ai auction ends at $405,000, but prior registrant files lawsuit to halt transfer", 2025-10-12, https://domainnamewire.com/2025/10/12/blockchain-ai-auction-ends-at-405000-but-prior-registrant-files-lawsuit-to-halt-transfer/

## Two-factor by app, a recovery email off the name

Two-factor login asks for a second code after the password. That code can come in two main ways, Andrew Allemann explained on Domain Name Wire on 8 August 2017: by text message, or from an app. Text messages, the same post says, are not always reliable and are starting to be cracked. So choose the code from an app.

Allemann called two-factor login a must on Domain Name Wire on 25 March 2022. The same article says that a registrar without it is a reason to move, and that a physical key is better still. Turn two-factor on at the registrar and at the email account behind it. Thieves, the article says, often enter a registrar account through its email.

Give the registrar a recovery email that does not live on the name. ICANN's expired-names policy of 2013 recommends a secondary email that is not associated with the name. Once a name expires, the mail on that name stops working, and the expiry notices stop with it.

Then verify the email on the record when the registrar asks. Since the 2013 registrar agreement, registrars must verify a registrant's contact details and suspend a name whose owner does not answer. One registrar's chief executive gave ICANN's board a count, which Domain Name Wire reported on 24 June 2014: at least 800,000 names had been suspended since 1 January 2014.

Namecheap's help page of 2025 gives you fifteen calendar days to verify. After that, the name is suspended and its DNS, the settings that point the name to your site, is changed. Visitors then see Namecheap's verification page instead of your site.

## Leave the transfer lock on

Moving a name to another registrar takes two things. The transfer lock must be off, and you need a transfer code, which your registrar hands you once the name is unlocked. The new registrar then sends the request to the registry, and your current registrar asks you to confirm it. Under ICANN's transfer policy, a transfer that nobody denies goes through. In Cloudflare's documentation, that happens on the fifth day.

The transfer lock stops the first step. On the record, the lock is a code that the registrar sets, clientTransferProhibited. According to Namecheap's help page, the lock is on by default at Namecheap. This lock is so basic that it is not worth listing among security features, Andrew Allemann wrote (Domain Name Wire, 25 March 2022).

Allemann's article does list the registry lock. This is a lock that the registry itself holds against changes to the name's servers, and the article lists it for a site that earns revenue. So the transfer lock goes on from day one, and the registry lock goes on once the site earns revenue.

The reason to keep the transfer lock on came in 2025. A registrar had left 164 GB of customer data exposed for about three months, and that data included transfer codes, Domain Name Wire reported on 23 June 2025. That exposure could have let an attacker move any name whose lock was off. The registrar said it believed that nobody had accessed the data.

## Read the record back in WHOIS

Once the order completes, check the settings from outside your account. WHOIS on the website reads the registry's record for one name, and it gives one live lookup a day with no account. In Product, the WHOIS page comes with the Investor plan. WHOIS gives the registrar, the dates and each status code with its meaning in plain words.

1. Type the name in WHOIS. The answer names the registrar and the expiry date. Compare both with your order confirmation.
2. Read the status codes. The transfer lock appears there as a line about moving to another registrar.
3. On the Founder plan, type the full name in Browse and press Enter. Its drawer opens free if we track the name; if not, Analyse opens it with one counted analysis. Watch the name there. A mail reaches you when the record changes, and that includes a lifted lock or a new registrar.

## The rule

Register the moment you decide, with the company as holder in an account it controls. Keep auto-renew on and pay years ahead. Use two-factor through an app, keep the recovery email off the name and leave the transfer lock on. Each setting replaces a warning that would otherwise reach you only by email, at an address that may be dead.

## The ten minutes

- Register the name before you announce, pitch or file anything that carries it.
- Put the company's name and a company email on the record, never a person's name or email.
- Keep the registrar login in a password manager that two people can open.
- Turn on two-factor login through an app, at the registrar and at the email account behind it.
- Give the registrar a recovery email that does not live on the name, and verify the email on the record when the registrar asks.
- Turn auto-renew on, pay for several years ahead and note the date the card expires.
- Leave the transfer lock on, and read every email about a transfer.
- Look the name up in WHOIS and keep the result with the order confirmation.

## Ask for the name in the company's account

Send this to the developer or agency who registered the name in their own account, on the day you notice.

> Hello [first name],
>
> Thank you for registering [name] for us. We would like the company to hold the name in its own account, so that a renewal or a change never depends on one mailbox.
>
> Could you move it into our account at [registrar] by [date]? The email on our account is [company email]. If that is not possible, could you unlock the name and send us the transfer code, and leave the registrant unchanged?
>
> We will pay any fee the registrar charges.
>
> Thank you,
>
> [your name]

Keep the reply with the order confirmation. A change of holder blocks any move to another registrar for sixty days, so if you also want to change registrar, ask for that move first.

## Ask the registrar what auto-renew will do

Send this to the registrar's support in the week you register, so that you have the answer in writing before the first renewal.

> Hello,
>
> I have registered [name] with you and turned auto-renew on. Could you confirm in writing:
>
> 1. On which day you first charge the card, how many times you retry, and when you make the last attempt.
>
> 2. How many days after expiry I can still renew at the normal price, and what the restore fee is after that.
>
> 3. Whether the transfer lock is on for [name], and whether two-factor login by app is available on my account.
>
> Thank you,
>
> [your name]

Set a reminder for the day of the first attempt. If no charge appears on that day, renew the name by hand.

## Try it in WHOIS

1. Open WHOIS on the website, which gives one live lookup a day with no account. Type the name you registered, or any name you hold. Write down the registrar and the expiry date. Compare them with your order confirmation.
2. Read the status codes and find the line about moving to another registrar: the transfer lock. If it is missing, turn the lock on at your registrar and look again the next day.
3. Read who holds the name. When the registry publishes the holder, it should be the company. When the holder is redacted, check the registrant in your registrar account.
4. On the Founder plan, type the name in Browse: free if we track it, one counted analysis if not. Watch it in its drawer: a mail reaches you when the record changes. Put the expiry date in your own calendar.

Do this in Unique Domains: Open WHOIS. The public page: https://unique.domains/whois

## Sources

- Cloudflare, "Register a new domain · Cloudflare Registrar docs", 2026-04-24, https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/get-started/register-domain/
- Elliot Silver, DomainInvesting, "Don’t Delay Registering Trending Domain Names", 2025-04-16, https://domaininvesting.com/dont-delay-registering-trending-domain-names/
- ICANN, "Registrants' Benefits and Responsibilities", 2013-09-16, https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/benefits-2013-09-16-en
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Man sentenced for hijacking company’s domain name and demanding $10,000", 2017-09-20, https://domainnamewire.com/2017/09/20/domain-ransom/
- ICANN, "Transfer Policy", 2016-06-01, https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/transfer-policy-2016-06-01-en
- Cloudflare, "Renew domains with Cloudflare Registrar · Cloudflare Registrar docs", 2026-04-24, https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/account-options/renew-domains/
- ICANN, "Expired Registration Recovery Policy", 2013-02-28, https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/errp-2013-02-28-en
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Five interesting takeaways from Dynadot’s Quarterly Intelligence Report", 2026-08-03, https://domainnamewire.com/2026/08/03/dynadot-quarterly/
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Virginia Department of Health sues to recover expired domain, now used for porn", 2026-09-24, https://domainnamewire.com/2026/09/24/virginia-wic-domain/
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Blockchain.ai auction ends at $405,000, but prior registrant files lawsuit to halt transfer", 2025-10-12, https://domainnamewire.com/2025/10/12/blockchain-ai-auction-ends-at-405000-but-prior-registrant-files-lawsuit-to-halt-transfer/
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Switch to authenticator apps for better two-factor authentication", 2017-08-08, https://domainnamewire.com/2017/08/08/switch-authenticator-apps-better-two-factor-authentication/
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "How to secure your domain names", 2022-03-25, https://domainnamewire.com/2022/03/25/how-to-secure-your-domain-names/
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Over 800,000 domain names suspended due to 2013 RAA", 2014-06-24, https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/24/over-800000-domain-names-suspended-due-to-2013-raa/
- Namecheap, "Whois verification process - Domains - Namecheap.com", 2025-09-18, https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9305/46/whois-verification-process/
- Namecheap, "What is Registrar Lock? - Domain Transfers - Namecheap.com", 2019-01-04, https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/565/8/what-is-registrar-lock/
- Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Domain registrar Openprovider exposed transfer codes, registrant data in data leak", 2025-06-23, https://domainnamewire.com/2025/06/23/domain-registrar-openprovider-exposed-transfer-codes-registrant-data-in-data-leak/
- Cloudflare, "Transfer domain from Cloudflare to another registrar · Cloudflare Registrar docs", 2026-04-24, https://developers.cloudflare.com/registrar/account-options/transfer-out-from-cloudflare/

This course explains how the trade works. It is not legal or financial advice.

## Related pages

- Look up a name’s registry record, status codes and drop date: https://unique.domains/whois
- See how founders go from a search to a shortlist: https://unique.domains/solutions/founders
- Read every domain word in plain English: https://unique.domains/glossary