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Transferring a domain without losing your email

What it costs 6 min read

How to move a domain to another company without the quiet week where your mail stops, including everything worth copying down before you start.

You have decided to move your domain somewhere else. Maybe the company that holds it has stopped being useful, maybe the renewal notice was a surprise, maybe you are finally getting everything into one account you control.

The move itself is a routine, well-worn process. What catches people is the email, which stops without warning in the middle of it and takes a day to notice and a week to fully recover from.

Four things that sound like one thing

Almost every problem in this job comes from these four being treated as one.

The domain is the name, rented from a registrar. The settings are the list that says where that name points: this part goes to the website, that part goes to the mail. The hosting is the computer holding your actual pages. The mail is wherever your inbox really lives, which may be a completely different company from all three.

A transfer moves the first one only. Your pages and your mailbox do not travel. What can quietly travel is the list of settings, and that is the list your mail depends on.

The part that actually breaks is the mail

Inside those settings is a line that tells the entire internet where to deliver mail addressed to your name. Nothing else does that job.

Most registrars run the settings for the domains they hold, as a convenience. So when the name leaves, that convenience can leave with it, and the list either empties or reverts to the new company's defaults. The website usually survives because somebody remembers to point it back. The mail line is the one nobody remembers, because mail is invisible until it stops.

When it goes, sent mail bounces back to whoever wrote to you and you see nothing at all. That is the failure to plan around, and it is entirely avoidable by copying the list down first.

Write down what exists before you touch anything

Do this before you start, whether or not you are the one doing the work.

Log in to wherever the settings currently live and photograph or screenshot the whole list of records. Every line, including the ones that look like a paragraph of nonsense, because those are usually the ones proving your mail is genuine. Write down which company holds the name, which company runs the settings, which company holds the pages, and which company runs the mail.

If you cannot answer all four, that is your first job and it is more important than the transfer. Nobody should move a domain they cannot describe.

What you need from whoever holds it now

A transfer is deliberately hard to do behind an owner's back, which means several small permissions have to be lined up.

The name has to be unlocked. You need the transfer code, sometimes called an authorization code, which the current registrar issues to the account holder. The contact email address on the domain has to be one you can actually open, because the approval message goes there and to nowhere else. Privacy may need turning off for a day so that message can reach you.

There are also waiting periods. A name registered in the last sixty days usually cannot be moved yet, and neither can one transferred in the last sixty days. Changing the owner's contact details can start that same clock, which is why you change details after a move rather than the week before.

And do not try to move a name that has already lapsed. Renew it first where it stands, then move it when it is healthy.

The order that keeps you online

Do it in this order and the quiet week does not happen.

First, set the settings up at the new place, matching the list you copied line for line, including the mail line. Second, point the name at the new settings and check the site still loads and mail still arrives, which it will, because you copied everything. Third, transfer the name itself. By the time the registration moves, nothing depends on the old company any more.

Two practical notes. Start on a Monday morning, never on a Friday, because a transfer commonly takes up to a week and you want people at their desks. And ask whoever does the work to shorten the caching time on your settings the day before, which narrows the window where some people see the old setup and some the new.

A transfer normally includes a year of registration, so you are not paying twice. The one thing it never includes is your pages or your mailbox contents. Those are separate moves, and if somebody has told you the transfer handles them, ask again.

When the person holding it has stopped answering

The domain was registered by someone who built the site years ago and has since gone quiet, and every route on this page needs their cooperation.

You are not stuck, but you are slower. If the domain is registered in your name or your business's name, the registrar has a process for restoring account access to the rightful owner, and it turns on paperwork rather than goodwill. Call them, explain plainly, and expect to prove who you are.

If it is registered in someone else's name, that is a different and harder conversation, and it is worth knowing where you stand before you spend three weeks on it. Either way, keep a written record of every attempt to contact them. Registrars ask for exactly that.

The week after the move

The move is not done when the registration says it moved.

Send yourself a message from an outside address and confirm it arrives. Reply to it and confirm the reply arrives. Fill in your own website form and see whether the inquiry lands. Load the site on your phone, on mobile data rather than your own wifi, and check the address still starts with https and the browser is not calling it Not secure. Chrome replaced the padlock with a small sliders icon in September 2023, so a missing padlock tells you nothing on its own. The warning is the thing you are looking for. Check the mail records again a week later. The sending records are the ones most often left behind, and the symptom shows up as quotes landing in junk long after anybody connects it to the move.

Then, on the new account, turn on auto-renew, turn on two-step login, and put the expiry date in your own calendar.

A short checklist

Questions people ask

Will my website go down while the domain transfers

Not if the settings are recreated at the new place beforehand. The transfer itself moves the registration, not the pages.

Will I lose my email

Only if the mail line in the settings is not copied across before the name moves. That is the one thing to check twice.

How long does a domain transfer take

Commonly up to about a week, sometimes much faster when both sides approve promptly. Plan for the week.

Do I lose the time left on my registration

No. A transfer normally adds a year to whatever you had, so nothing is thrown away.

Can I transfer a domain that is expiring next week

Renew it first, then move it. Trying to do both at once is how names end up in the expensive recovery stage.

What if the person who registered it will not give me the code

Contact the registrar directly. If the name is registered to you or your business, they have a process for it, and it runs on documents rather than on the other person agreeing.

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