Domains · October 22, 2026 · 5 min read
How to transfer a domain name without breaking anything
Most of a domain transfer is waiting. The part that trips people up is what you do before you hit the button.
Transferring a domain is mostly a waiting game. Five to seven days of nothing happening, then it's done. What breaks sites and kills email isn't the transfer itself, it's the prep work people skip in the ten minutes before they click the button.
Here's the order to do things in so nothing goes dark.
Check whether you're even allowed to transfer yet
Three rules block more transfers than anything else.
The 60-day lock. If you registered the domain in the last 60 days, or transferred it in the last 60 days, you can't move it. This is an ICANN rule, not a registrar policy, so nobody can waive it for you. Same thing applies if you changed the registrant contact info (the name or email on the domain) within 60 days. That one surprises people. Update your contact details and you've just started a two-month clock.
The domain has to be unlocked. Registrar lock is on by default, and that's a good thing. It stops someone from moving your domain without permission. You turn it off yourself in your account settings, usually under domain settings or security.
Your WHOIS email has to work. The approval email for the transfer goes to the administrative contact address on the domain record. If that's an old address from an employee who left, or an email on the very domain you're moving, you have a problem. Fix it first, then wait out the 60 days if changing it triggered the lock.
Write down your DNS records before you touch anything
This is the step that actually breaks things.
A domain transfer moves who bills you and who manages the domain. It does not automatically carry over your DNS records in every case. If your new registrar sets the domain to its own default nameservers, your website can go blank and your email can stop arriving.
So before you start, open your current DNS settings and copy everything into a text file. Specifically:
- A records (point your domain at your website's server IP)
- CNAME records (aliases, often used for
wwwor third-party tools) - MX records (where your email goes, and the priority numbers next to each one)
- TXT records (SPF, DKIM, domain verification strings for services you've connected)
- Nameserver addresses, exactly as written
Screenshot the whole page too. It takes two minutes and it's the difference between a five-minute fix and a panicked afternoon.
If your website and email are hosted somewhere other than your registrar, the simplest move is to keep pointing at the same nameservers after the transfer. Nothing changes, nothing breaks.
Get your authorization code and start the transfer
The auth code (also called an EPP code or transfer key) is a password that proves you own the domain. You request it from your current registrar and it usually arrives by email within minutes, sometimes a few hours.
Two things to know. If you have domain privacy turned on, some registrars won't release the code until you temporarily disable it. And the code expires, often in a couple of weeks, so don't request it and then sit on it for a month.
With the code in hand, go to your new registrar and start the transfer. You'll pay for one year, and that year gets added to your existing expiration date. You don't lose remaining time.
Then two approvals happen. The new registrar emails you to confirm you want this. Approve it fast. The old registrar also emails you, usually with an option to approve immediately. If you ignore it, the transfer still goes through after about five days. If you click approve, it can finish in a few hours.
What happens while you wait
Your site stays up. Your email keeps working. The domain keeps resolving the entire time, as long as you didn't change nameservers.
Don't do these things mid-transfer:
- Don't change nameservers or DNS records
- Don't let the domain expire (renew before transferring if the expiration date is within a few weeks)
- Don't cancel your hosting or email service at the old provider
That last one matters. Registration and hosting are separate services even when you bought them together. Cancel the hosting account and your site goes down whether or not the domain moved.
Takeaways
- You can't transfer a domain within 60 days of registering it, transferring it, or changing the registrant contact.
- Copy every DNS record (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) to a text file before you start. This is the step that prevents outages.
- The auth code comes from your current registrar and may require turning off domain privacy first.
- Paying for the transfer adds a year to your existing expiration date. You lose nothing.
- Keep hosting and email running at the old provider until the new setup is confirmed working.
Once the transfer completes, check the obvious things: load your website, send yourself a test email, and reply to it from another account. If both work, you're done. Turn the registrar lock back on and set a calendar reminder for the renewal date.
If you're consolidating domains so everything lives in one account, or you're moving because you want professional email on your own domain instead of a free address, handle the domain side first with a registrar you'll actually log into again. Then build email on top of it once the dust settles.
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