Your web designer holds your domain. Here is how to get it back.
If a web designer registered your business’s domain in their own name or their own account, the registration record shows them as the holder, whoever paid. Getting it back means two changes: the name on the registration, and the account it sits in. Start by asking, in writing.
First, find out where the domain is held
The registration record shows which registrar holds the domain and when it renews. The free check reads it for you (fields 1.1 and 1.2). The record usually hides whose name is on the domain, so ask the registrar, or the designer, who the registrant is.
Ask for it to be moved into the business’s name
Write to the designer, keep it friendly, and ask for two things: the registrant changed to the business, and the domain moved to a registrar account the business controls. If the designer also hosts the website or email, say you want those to keep working during the move.
Moving a .uk domain
Domains ending in .uk, including .co.uk, are run by Nominet. To move one to a different registrar, the current registrar changes the domain’s IPS tag (also called the Nominet tag) to the new registrar’s tag. There is no transfer code. Changing the registrant, the name on the domain, is a separate step, and Nominet may charge for it.
Moving a .com or most other domains
For .com and most other endings, the domain must be unlocked at the current registrar, which then gives a transfer code, also called an authorisation, auth or EPP code. You give that code to the new registrar to start the move. A registrar can refuse a transfer for a set period after the domain was registered or last moved, so ask the new registrar what applies.
If the designer won’t help
Ask once more in writing, and keep copies. The registries run dispute services: Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service for .uk domains, and the UDRP for most others. They are designed for domains registered in bad faith, and a solicitor can tell you whether yours fits. This guide isn’t legal advice.
When it happened to us
It happens the other way round too. We built the website for one of our own projects while its domain sat in another person’s account at their registrar. The site was finished, but it could not go live until that person signed in and changed the nameservers, and nobody else could make the change. So the launch waited on them, for a long time.
Nothing was wrong. The key was simply in someone else’s pocket. Knowing that before launch day, and asking for the change early, would have saved the wait.
Afterwards
- Make sure the renewal reminders go to an email address the business controls.
- Turn on two-step login at the registrar.
- Add a second person who can sign in, so one person’s absence can’t lock the business out.
- Write down who holds the domain now. That is what the register is for.