Cancel the Plan, Keep the Name

The cancellation screen of a website builder asks one question and answers three. You are ending a subscription to some software; you are also, depending on how the account was set up, deciding the fate of a domain registration and a mailbox that happen to be billed alongside it.

They are separate subscriptions with separate dates, and separating them properly before you click is the entire job. Everything below assumes you have decided to leave and are simply determined not to lose anything on the way out.

Establish what is actually in the account

Open the billing screen and write down every recurring item with its renewal date. In a typical bundled account there are three.

The plan is the software: the editor, the hosting, the templates. Ending it takes the website down at the end of the paid period.

The domain registration is a year of a name in a registry. It has a registry expiry date, which is not necessarily the same as the date shown against the subscription. Where they differ, the registry date is the true one, and it is visible on the public registration record.

The mailbox, if you have one, is a third subscription, usually a seat on a mail service the builder resells. It has its own renewal date and, as covered in who really provides your website builder's email, its own operator behind the product name.

If the account contains other items — a scheduling tool, a marketing add-on, an SSL product — note them too. They are outside the scope of this card but they are inside the scope of your bill.

Decide the destination of each item before touching any of them

Cancelling first and sorting the rest out afterwards is how people end up paying a restore fee.

The domain. Either it stays at this provider as a standalone registration, or it moves to an independent registrar. Both are fine; drifting into the first because you did not choose is not. If it is moving, the transfer is the slowest element and it has to start first — the sixty-day locks in ICANN's Transfer Policy mean that a name registered or altered recently simply cannot go anywhere yet. The procedure is in the transferring a domain away from a website builder guide.

The mailbox. Either you keep paying the builder for it, or you set up a direct account with the operator and migrate. If the address matters to your business, the second is the right answer and the work should be finished before anything is cancelled.

The DNS zone. If you delegated your nameservers to the builder, the zone is inside the account you are about to close. It has to be recreated somewhere else first, or every service attached to your name stops being findable. This is the most commonly missed item and it is covered in who controls your DNS zone.

The order

1. Read the registration record. Confirm the registrant contact email is an address you can open, and note the creation and expiry dates.
2. Start the domain transfer, if it is moving. It goes first because policy attaches waiting periods to it that nobody is able to shorten.
3. Stand up the replacement mailbox. Create the direct account, migrate the mail, but do not repoint MX yet.
4. Build the DNS zone at its new home. Every record, including MX and any mail-authentication records, verified while the old nameservers are still answering.
5. Switch the nameservers once. Then verify positively: load the site, and send mail in and out of each address from an outside account.
6. Let everything run in parallel for a month. This is the insurance premium and it is one month of a subscription you have been paying for years.
7. Cancel the plan. Last, and only once steps one to six are demonstrably finished.

What cancelling actually does at each provider

Providers differ in the detail and the detail is worth reading in their own words rather than mine, but two patterns hold widely enough to plan around.

The first is that cancelling a plan does not cancel a domain registration. The registration is a separate purchase with a separate term, and it continues until its own expiry date. This is good news and it is the reason a careful cancellation is possible at all.

The second is that cancelling a plan does not automatically cancel a mailbox subscription either, and that cuts both ways: your mail keeps working, and you keep being charged for it until you deal with it deliberately.

What you should not assume is that any of this is reversible on a whim. Ending a subscription and reinstating it a week later is not always the same as never having ended it, particularly where a promotional price was attached.

The two mistakes that cost real money

Cancelling early to save a month. The old plan is a safety net while the new arrangement is being proved. Ending it a month early converts a routine cutover into one with no fallback, in exchange for the price of one month.

Cancelling before the transfer completes. If the domain is mid-transfer and the account closes, you have a registration in an uncertain state at a company that no longer has you as a customer. Finish the transfer, confirm the name shows the new registrar on the public record, and then close anything.

Afterwards

Three small jobs on the day the plan ends, which take ten minutes and prevent the next problem.

Confirm auto-renew is switched on at whichever registrar now holds the name, and that a valid payment method is attached to it. Reinstate the transfer lock and, if you use it, domain privacy — both are cleared by a transfer and neither comes back by itself.

Then check the registrant contact address one final time. It is the address that will receive the expiry notices described in expired domains and the redemption window, and at this point in the story it should not be a mailbox at a provider you have just left.

If you are reading this before signing up rather than before cancelling, the terms that create this situation in the first place are set out on free domain website builder plans. Reading them first is how you avoid needing this card at all.