How to transfer a domain name when you sell your business

Every domain name has a registrant, the person or company that legally holds it, and a registrar, the company it’s registered with and renewed through, such as 123 Reg, GoDaddy or Cloudflare.

When a business is sold, the registrant should become the buyer. Whether it also moves to a different registrar is up to the buyer: they may be happy to keep it where it is, in an account of their own.

Our free health check shows which registrar your domain is with, when it expires and whether it’s locked against transfer. Then find the account it sits in. If it’s in a web designer’s account or a former employee’s, ask them now to move it to an account in the business’s name.

If it expires within the next couple of months, renew it first, so it can’t lapse in the middle of the sale.

.uk domains are run by Nominet, and work slightly differently from other domains.

• To change the owner, ask your registrar for a registrant transfer (sometimes called a change of registrant). The buyer usually has to accept it.
• To move it to the buyer’s registrar, there’s no authorisation code. The buyer tells you their registrar’s “IPS tag”, and you change the tag in your registrar’s control panel. The domain then appears in the buyer’s account.

• Update the owner details to the buyer in your registrar’s control panel.
• To move it to another registrar, unlock the domain and get its authorisation code (also called an EPP or transfer code). The buyer starts the transfer at their registrar using that code, and you approve it.
• Registrars often won’t move a domain for a period (often up to 60 days) after it was registered, transferred or had its owner changed. Leave enough time before completion.

Some registrars, including GoDaddy and 123 Reg, also let you “push” a domain straight into another customer’s account with the same registrar. That’s often the simplest option.

A domain’s DNS settings tell the internet where the website and email are. If the registrar also hosts these settings, moving the domain can take them with it, or leave them behind.

Before anything moves, export or screenshot every DNS record. After the move, check that the records are the same and send a test email to the business’s address. Our health check is a quick way to confirm the website and email still work.

• Make sure the renewal is on the buyer’s card and the renewal reminders go to their email address.
• Turn the transfer lock back on, so nobody else can move the domain.
• Remove your own access from the buyer’s account, if you were added to help.