The card index
One card per question, each traced back to the policy or the help page it came from. If you are trying to work out whether a name is really yours, start with the record; everything else on this site depends on what it says.
Filed newest first
Cancel the Plan, Keep the Name
Cancelling a website builder subscription is meant to end one relationship. Done in the wrong order it ends three, and two of them are the ones you needed. Here is the sequence that leaves you holding the domain and the mailbox.
Expired Domains and the Redemption Window
A domain that lapses does not vanish. It goes through a sequence of stages with names, durations and fees, most of them set by policy rather than by your provider. Knowing the sequence is the difference between a nuisance and a loss.
Who Really Provides Your Website Builder's Email
The product is called Business Email. The company operating it is usually Google or Microsoft, and the company you can phone is neither. Knowing which is which changes what you do when something breaks.
Email on a Moving Domain: Keeping the Mailbox Alive
A website that goes down is noticed within the hour. A mailbox that stops accepting mail fails silently, and the people it fails are the ones trying to give you money. Here is what to protect while a domain changes hands.
Keeping Your Domain When You Move Website Builders
Changing platform is a decision about software. Your domain is not software — it is a registration with its own owner, its own expiry date and its own rules, and it survives the change only if you treat it as a separate thing.
Domain Privacy and the Registration Record, Without the Scare Stories
Privacy services are sold with a story about spam and stalkers. The real reason to understand them is duller and more important: privacy sits between you and the one email that lets you move your name.
Who Controls Your DNS Zone, and Why It Decides Everything Else
There are two ways to connect a domain to a website builder, and they differ in one respect that matters more than convenience: which company's control panel holds the records that route your mail.
What Your Domain Renews At, and Why Nobody Will Tell You
The first-year price is set in enormous type on a landing page. The renewal price is behind a login, in a search box, or in a help article that lists no figures at all. Here is where to find the number before you owe it.
Who Owns the Domain Your Website Builder Registered?
The provider says the name is registered in your name. The registration record either agrees with that or it does not, and reading it takes about a minute. Here is what the fields mean and which one actually decides whether you can leave.