Don’t Get Ripped Off When You Want To Change Registrar

Michele Neylon

16 years ago

I’m a very strong believer in letting people move their domains and hosting around as much as they want.

Unfortunately some people do not share my philosophy and prefer to hold their registrants to ransom.

While I’ve already written about .ie domain transfers and those of .com, I hadn’t gone into much detail on co.uk domains.

Let’s be completely transparent about costs.

We are a Nominet registrar, so we pay Nominet £5 (sterling) to register domains for 2 years. In turn we charge registrants €8. Depending on the currency rates our margin per domain will vary and we also have our Nominet membership fees to factor in. Yes. We do make money on each and every co.uk registration and renewal, but we’re a business not a charity.

Now when it comes to moving a co.uk domain from one registrar to another Nominet’s system is a little different.

With most ccTLDs and gTLDs the registrant requests that the new registrar takeover the domain (pull) , while with Nominet’s system the losing registrar has to hand the domain over to a competitor (push). However Nominet does not charge the registrar for this change ie. it is free and takes only seconds to complete. All the current registrar needs is the IPS tag of the new registrar and the domains to push. It couldn’t be simpler really.

Or could it?

Well some people’s business model seems to rely heavily on overcharging clients for just about everything.

While I have no issue with charging for things that cost money to provide I find it abhorrent to charge people who want to change provider. If they’re changing provider there maybe an issue with the service we’re providing (or not) so why make a bad situation worse?

Fortunately there is light at the end of the tunnel.

All owners (registrants) of co.uk domains have access to Nominet’s online services system. Under normal circumstances the online system allows you to manage your contact details and conduct basic maintenance on your domain portfolio, however it also allows you to transfer domain ownership and change registrars if you so choose (for a fee).
Nominet charge £11.75 (including VAT) to retag (transfer) any number of *.uk domains for a registrant. So if you want to move 1 domain or 500 domains the fee will be the same.

Don’t be held ransom!

If your domain matters to you choose a registrar you are happy with.

(We don’t charge anything to retag *.uk domains – we don’t get charged, so why would we charge you??)