Long Domain Transfer Process

I almost feel like I participated in a miraculous situation last week when I was transferring a domain name. I bought a domain name that was registered at Godaddy, and it was pushed to my account  instantly. I then flipped the domain name the next day to another domain investor. The reps at Godaddy helped to unlock the name within a couple of hours (they lock it for security measures), and it was ready to transfer.

I sent the domain name’s authorization code to the buyer, and within 10 minutes of his requesting a transfer to his registrar, I received an email asking me to confirm. I confirmed that this was legit, and under an hour later I received an email from Godaddy asking me if the transfer was legitimate, which I immediately accepted within my Domain Manger at Godaddy account.

Under 30 minutes later, I  received  an email from Godaddy confirming that the domain name was successfully transferred.

I don’t understand why it takes so long (up to 5 days) from other domain registrars. Are their systems antiquated and they can’t quickly process transactions as fast as Godaddy? Or is it a stall tactic in the hopes that the transferrer changes his mind?

Whatever the case, I appreciate the quick transfer speed of Godaddy.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

21 COMMENTS

  1. When a domain moves to another registrar, it is harder to recover it. Imagine the same scenario, but someone hacked your email and was approving the transfer without your knowledge. You’d only have 30 minutes to notice the email, and contact your registrar to stop it. You’d appreciate the 5-7 day wait time at other registrars in that case.

    • @ William

      Some companies don’t have the lock. For example, I bought a domain name that’s registered at Net Sol. The guy pushed it to my account two days ago, and it’s now pending transfer to Moniker.

      @ Michael

      Very good point.

    • @ Don

      I agree… but I think that has more to do with the fact that I don’t generally take “no” or “we can’t” for an answer. If I get an answer I don’t like, I find someone at the company with whom I can speak and try to make it happen. It’s not because of my name, it’s because of my diligence, and that’s how I am for business and non-business related things. 🙂

  2. Thank you shedding light on this.

    I have accounts at dozens of registrars… thanks to drop catching, so I have experienced MANY user interfaces and transfer processes.

    GoDaddy is THE ONLY REGISTRAR that let’s you accept a transfer out to another registrar.

    Yes, many registrars allow for a “push” or account transfer but if you are transferring out, most times you have wait five days.

    Maybe your account rep will help you out as was done recently for me by my account rep at Buy Domains/Domain Discover.

    We want the ability to approve transfers out from all registrars.

    If I’m logged in to my account, why can’t I approve the transfer out of my domain?

  3. Right. Only one with 60 lock after renewal, registration etc but only one to allow registrant to accept transfer out.

    Actually their Wild West reseller has same.

    Call your rep to get 60 day holds lifted. Easy as that.

  4. To be honest, as a regular seller who keeps most of my .com names at godaddy, I would rather the 60 day lock was enforced across the board. Not too happy knowing they don’t.

  5. If the transfer happens faster, you get paid faster also by the likes of Escrow.com and such.

    Godaddy is a clean process as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to keep tabs on multiple domains on five day transfers. I want it done very fast.

  6. See Elliot…I told you Godaddy’s really good with domain related stuff. Can’t say the same about their hosting service though. I think the tech support is not as friendly as they use to be. Oh well.

  7. I just bought a domain, the domain is registered with tucows, the transfer process was pretty quickly, took like 1 day. I think they have the option to accept/reject the transfer as well.

  8. 5 days is long lol. How about our transaction together and thankfully we could have a payment plan during the wait approach.

    So a 30 or 45 day locked at enom.com how amazing is that. I honestly do not know how namejet and domainers continue to do business with them

    Flipping names and cash flow is key. Elliot pushes a lot of names quietly and a power seller. Waiting around 45 days to move sucks

    The only good thing I see if he buys a drop for a lot of cash and sold for 10k or above on payment plan. To get deal done this works in his favor actually on bigger names and lock up. Offer payment plan, buyer happy, Elliot happy for 30 days and name is transfered.

    Have to agree Elliot with couple others here your name helped and also godadddy requires a min 500 names I believe to have a rep. Its who you know or your name. Imo. A godadddy customer with 20 names would not get this lock off.

  9. I’m sure they didn’t know that it was ELLIOTT SILVER and if they gave you great service you’d mention it in your award winning industry blog from which almost 99.9999 per cent of their customers derive?

  10. Registrars are forced to follow certain transfer rules mandated by ICANN which can be found here http://www.icann.org/en/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm. It is oftentimes not at the registrar’s discretion on how they handle transfers. For example, from Verisign’s own documentation provided to registrars, “The Registrar License and Agreement (RL&A), Exhibit B, prohibits a second-level domain name (SLD) holder from changing registrars within the first 60 days of the initial registration. Enforcement is the responsibility of the Registrar of Record for the domain name, and is also systematically enforced by the VeriSign Registry.” Therefore, even if we tried to submit a transfer request for a .com/net domain that had been registered within 60 days of that date, Verisign’s system would disallow it (most other registries have the same enforcement).

    Regarding the 5-day transfer time frame, that is also governed by the ICANN transfer policies. Once a registrar submits a domain to be transferred, the losing registrar can either reject the request, approve the request, or ignore it which will result in the transfer completing within 5 days. I can tell you, as a registrar ourselves, that the 5-day window is not from the point in time that the transfer request is submitted, but from the point in time that the losing registrar is notified of the request (this can sometimes take up to 24 hours).

    This is unfortunately a long time to wait in some cases, and I wish all registrars would allow a mechanism to approve outgoing transfers. This is something we have done at NameSilo, and GoDaddy is the only other registrar I know of that offers it as well through their interface. I can also tell you that in over 98% of incoming domain transfers, that the losing registrar did not respond to the request meaning that the full 5-6 days had to pass before the transfer was completed.

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