Who Owns Your Domain Name? Find Out Today
We have watched a company lose its domain because the developer who registered it in 2014 stopped answering email. We have watched another pay four figures to recover a domain that expired while the credit card on file belonged to a former office manager. Both were preventable in ten minutes.
The three things that must be true
- The domain is registered in an account your business controls, with a company email address, not a personal or vendor one.
- Billing is on a company card, and the renewal is set to auto-renew with a reminder in your calendar.
- At least two people at your company can log in.
How to check right now
Look up your domain in a public WHOIS lookup. Registrant details are usually redacted by privacy services, but the registrar is visible, and that tells you where the account lives. Then confirm you can log into that registrar and see your domain listed. If you cannot, you do not control your domain, regardless of what anyone has told you.
The DNS question is separate
Owning the domain and controlling DNS are different things. DNS is where your website, email, and verification records point. Whoever controls DNS can move your email, and that is a bigger operational risk than the website going down. Know which service hosts your DNS and who has access.
Getting it back
If a vendor holds your domain, ask them politely to transfer it: they need to unlock it and provide an authorization code, and the transfer takes about five days. Most will help. If a relationship has soured, your registrar's dispute process exists, but it is slow and it favors whoever is on the account. Do this while everyone is still friendly.
Write it down
Keep one document with your registrar, DNS host, web host, and website admin logins, stored somewhere your successor could find it. Every business should be able to survive the departure of the one person who "handles the website," and most cannot. If you would like a hand doing the audit, ask us, it is a short conversation.
