Transferring Domain Registration/Domain Management to new provider/registrars

After last reviewing just how many domain names I have, it dawned on me that they were all spread over at least 4 different registrars, and I couldn't work out why.

Looking back, I think I started out buying domains back in 2002, and chose GoDaddy as it just seemed the cheapest for .com domains at the time, plus I liked their adverts.  However, when I decided to buy some .co.uk domains I decided to look for a company closer to home, as I don't think GoDaddy were offering .co.uks then.

So after a bit of researchng the net for decent registrars, my gut feeling told me to go with LCN.com (Low Cost Names) as for £8 for 2 years and a very user friendly admin interface I couldn't really grumble.  I recently bought additional domains from Purplecloud.

Back in the day most of my domains weren't hosted and I had no hosted email account (purely because I was too cheap to pay for any :-) ), so I made full use of the email and web forwarding facilities to my free Yahoo email and free Webspace with my ISP.  But as time went on, and as I started to move into the professional world of IT, I realised I needed to look and be a bit more professional.  So the hunt for a hosted webspace and email provider was on. 

In the end I've come full circle back to GoDaddy and nervously taken on their web hosting offering and I'm even considering moving my entire email to them too.   I say nervously because even though they say they have a European data centre, one can't help but be a bit skeptical about hosting your prized websites and email with a foreign company.  But on the other hand GoDaddy have been around for years, and there are a lot of UK companies/people hosting their websites on there, so it can't be bad at all.

As the setting up of my new hosting went well, most recently I started to wonder why on earth do I have so many domains with different companies.  I have never experienced the process of transferring domains before, and was very worried about the safety of it (e.g. whether it would disappear during transit to the new provider), so I decided to try it on one of the .co.uk domains I wasn't that bothered about.  To my surprise it transferred to new registrar with 5 mins. The .com transfer wasn't that straight forward though, and at one point I started to wish I'd never started. lol. 

A lot of things at Purplecloud are not automatic, so I had to email their support team for an authorisation code, which took about 20 hours.  Then I had to go back to GoDaddy, buy the domain transfer service, wait for an email that had a Transaction ID and a security code, enter that into my account and then wait up to 5 days for confirmation (which I think is way too long to be waiting around).

So now I have all my .com domains at registered at Godaddy and all .co.uk domains registered at LCN.com (only because you can't transfer .co.uk to Godaddy at present :-( ).  As soon as Godaddy sort there game out to transfer .co.uk domains I'm transferring everything to them.  One provider is just so much easier.

Domain name registration prices have come down a lot over the years, so it pays to shop around at renewal time.  Don't just go for the lowest price one though.  Consider things like access to DNS management, any transfer fees, email/web forwarding facilities, etc.