How to transfer a domain without losing your website or email.

Why a transfer can take email down

A domain has two separate parts. The registration says who owns it and which registrar you pay. The DNS says where its website and email live, through records such as MX for email and A or CNAME for the website. A transfer moves the registration and should leave the DNS alone. But the DNS often sits at the old registrar, and once the domain leaves, the old registrar's DNS may stop answering for it.

So the safe order is DNS first, registration second:

• Check that the domain can move, and what else the old registrar provides.
• Copy every DNS record.
• Move the DNS to a host you will keep, and check that the website and email work from it.
• Then switch off the transfer lock, get the code, start the transfer and approve it.
• Afterwards, lock the domain again and check the renewal settings.

Done in that order, the transfer itself changes nothing a customer can see.

Which move you are making

Four different jobs get called a transfer. Work out which one you need before you start:

• A new registrar, same owner: you want to pay a different company, or keep all your domains in one place. This is the full transfer below.
• A new owner: the business is sold, a partner leaves, or a domain registered in the founder's name moves to the company. This is a change of registrant, with its own rules.
• Another account at the same registrar: many registrars can move a domain between two of their accounts without a transfer.
• A new website or email provider: no transfer at all. You change the DNS records or the nameservers, and the registration stays where it is.

ICANN's guidance for domain owners says you can change hosting or nameservers without going through a transfer and its lock. If the only reason for the move is a new website, change the records and leave the registration alone.

Check these before you start

For .com and other generic endings, ICANN's rules set out when a transfer can be refused. Check each point first:

• The domain was registered or last transferred more than 60 days ago. Inside that window the registrar may refuse.
• Nobody changed the registrant's name, organisation or email in the last 60 days, unless you opted out of the lock beforehand.
• The expiry date is not close. An expired domain can still be transferred, but one already deleted and in its redemption period has to be restored at the old registrar first, as what happens when your domain expires explains.
• The registrant email is an address you read. The old registrar sends its confirmation there.
• You can sign in at both registrars, with two-step verification on.
• You know what else the old registrar provides: email, forwarding, a website builder, hosting or a certificate. Cancel nothing yet.

Country endings follow their own registry's rules, covered further down.

Copy every DNS record

Find out where the DNS lives first. Look the domain up on ICANN Lookup and read the nameservers. If they belong to the old registrar, the DNS has to move before the registration does. If they belong to your web host or a DNS service such as Cloudflare, the transfer does not touch the records at all.

Then copy every record from the DNS settings page, with an export if there is one and screenshots if not:

• A and AAAA records, which point the domain and www at the website.
• CNAME records, often for www, for email settings and for tools such as your booking software.
• MX records, which deliver your email. Lose these and mail stops.
• TXT records: SPF, DMARC and the verification records for Google, Microsoft and other services.
• DKIM records, as TXT or CNAME, which prove your mail is genuine.
• SRV and CAA records, if there are any.

Do not rely on a new host's automatic scan of your old records. Cloudflare's own transfer guide warns that its scan may not find every record. Compare the copy line by line.

Keep the copy outside the registrar account, with the date on it. If anything breaks during the move, it is the only full record of how your email and website were set up.

Move the DNS to a host you will keep

With the copy in hand, set up the DNS where it will stay: the new registrar, your web host or a DNS service. Then switch to it before the transfer:

• A day before, lower the time to live on the main records at the old DNS host, if it lets you, so later changes spread faster.
• Recreate every record at the new DNS host and compare it with your copy, character by character.
• If DNSSEC is switched on, turn it off at the old registrar before you change the nameservers. Cloudflare's guide says to wait at least a day after that, because old DNSSEC settings can stop the domain resolving. Turn it on again at the new DNS host once everything works.
• Change the nameservers at the old registrar to the new DNS host's.
• Test from outside the business: the website with and without www, an email to each main address from a Gmail account, a reply, a form enquiry and a booking confirmation.

Changing nameservers is not a transfer and starts no lock. If something fails, put the old nameservers back while you find the missing record.

Keep email running through the move

Email breaks during transfers for three reasons, and each one can be avoided:

• The MX records did not come across. Copy them, and send a test from outside after every DNS change.
• The email itself came from the old registrar, as mailboxes or as forwarding, and it ends when you leave. Set up email with a separate service and move the mail before the transfer, as how to set up a business email address explains.
• The SPF or DKIM records were missed, so mail still arrives but what you send lands in spam. Why your business emails go to spam shows how to check them.

Check the messages your tools send too, such as confirmations from your booking automation. Picture a physiotherapy clinic that moves its domain and misses one DKIM record for its booking software. Confirmations start landing in spam, patients miss their times, and nobody links it to the transfer until someone thinks to check.

Then the lock, the code and the approval

Once the website and email run from the new DNS host without trouble, move the registration:

• At the old registrar, switch off the transfer lock. ICANN's rules make registrars give you a way to do it, and if there is no setting for it, they must remove the lock within five calendar days of your request.
• Get the transfer code, also called an auth code or EPP code. The same five-day rule applies. Codes are often valid only for a limited time, so ask for it when you are ready to use it.
• At the new registrar, start the transfer, enter the code and pay. For .com and most other generic endings, the new registrar adds a year to the registration and you keep the time you had left.
• Approve the confirmation email from the old registrar if one arrives. If the old registrar does not respond within five calendar days, ICANN's rules treat the transfer as approved.
• Change nothing else on the domain while the transfer is pending, especially the registrant's details.

ICANN approved changes to these transfer rules in June 2026. They apply only once they are put into practice, and until then the rules above stand. Your new registrar's help pages will say which version it follows.

After the transfer

• Switch the transfer lock back on.
• Turn on auto-renew, on a card the business holds, and note the new expiry date.
• Check that the registrant is the business and the contact email is one you read.
• Check that the nameservers are still the ones you set.
• Turn on two-step verification on the new account and give a second person from the business access.
• Only now cancel anything at the old registrar, and keep your copy of the DNS records.

If a past web designer still holds the old registrar account and will not release the domain, that is a different job: see how to get your website back from a web designer.

Domains bought through a website builder

If the domain was bought through Wix, Squarespace or Shopify, the builder is the registrar or works with one, and the DNS settings live inside the builder account. The same order applies: copy every record from the builder's DNS page, including the ones it added to connect the site, recreate them at the new DNS host, and test the site and email before you start the transfer.

After the move the site still lives on the builder. Check in its domain settings that the domain still shows as connected, and that the security certificate works on the domain with and without www. If the builder asks you to reconnect the domain, follow its own steps rather than guessing the records.

When the domain changes owner

A business sale, a partner leaving or a founder moving the domain into the company all mean a new registrant. For generic endings, ICANN's rules make the registrar confirm the change with both the old and the new registrant. After the change, the registrar must lock the domain against moving to another registrar for 60 days, unless the old registrant opted out before the change, where the registrar offers that.

So plan the order:

• If the new owner wants a different registrar, do that move first, then change the registrant.
• If the domain can stay at the same registrar, move it into the new owner's account there and let them update the details in their own account.
• Name the domain, and every account that depends on it, in the sale agreement. Ask your adviser how to word it.
• Hand over the email service's top admin role, Search Console, the Google Business Profile, analytics and the social media and ad accounts with it, each as an invitation to the new owner.

Agree how long the seller's old addresses keep forwarding, and who reads the mail that still arrives for them. When a salon changes hands, its clients keep writing to the same address, so agree who reads it from which day.

Country endings follow their own rules

ICANN's transfer rules cover .com, .net, .org and the other generic endings. Country endings follow their own registry:

• .uk domains move between registrars by changing the domain's tag at Nominet to the new registrar's, rather than with a code. The old registrar can do it, or the registrant can through Nominet's online services. Nominet plans to switch .uk to transfer codes in February 2027, and a .uk transfer does not automatically add a year.
• .de domains move with an AuthInfo code, under DENIC's rules.
• .eu domains move with an authorisation code, under EURid's rules.

For any other ending, read the registry's help pages or ask the new registrar before you start. The DNS steps above are the same everywhere.

Mistakes that take email down

• Starting the transfer before copying the DNS records.
• Moving the domain away from a registrar that also provided your mailboxes or forwarding.
• Changing the registrant email to an address on the domain being moved, then missing the confirmation when mail breaks.
• Changing the owner's details first, then finding the domain locked for 60 days.
• Leaving DNSSEC on while the nameservers change.
• Cancelling the old account the day the transfer completes, before checking that everything works.
• Transferring a domain at all, when only the website needed to move.

When we launch a site, the domain is pointed at it and every form gets one more test from a phone, as our websites page describes. A transfer deserves the same test at the end.