Do You Own Your Domain Name?

August 20th, 2008

This is an important question to find an answer to. When you or your company setup your website, how did you get your domain name?

• Did you buy it yourself?
• Did you have someone buy it for you?
• Did it come as part of a package deal? (Meaning that you got your domain name as part of some ’special website deal’)

This may seem like a trivial matter for some people. However, I know of at least one business owner who found out the hard way your domain name is serious business. When he wanted to move his entire web site to a less expensive web hosting company he discovered that the domain name he thought he owned was not registered in his name.

The web hosting company was the authorized registrant on the domain, not him. Technically this means the hosting company owned the domain name - not him. You need to be named registrant.

There are three “contacts” for a registered domain name:

• Administrative
• Technical
• Billing

At the very least you should be the “Administrative” contact, and most likely the “Billing” contact as well.

Is this the case for you?

Some of you will know, like I do, that you definitely own your domain name. But what if you are not sure? Where do you turn to find out. I have the answer for you. You need to do a “whois” search.

Go to this web site, called AllWhoIs.

Once at this web site enter the domain name you want to search and its suffix (.com, .net, .org, etc.)

Press “search” and the results will show in the window below. Look to see if you are the registrant and administrative contact. If not you need to get in touch with who is to transfer the domain.

Anything to share?

Please do so in the comments

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