Transferring a domain away from a website builder

Transferring a domain away from a website builder changes one thing: which company holds the registration on your behalf. It does not move your website, it does not move your mail, and it does not by itself change a single DNS record. Knowing exactly what it does and does not do is most of the job.

The four moving parts

Every generic top-level domain transfer is the same four steps in the same order, whatever the panel looks like.

1. Unlock the domain. Registrars apply a status called clientTransferProhibited by default, which is a lock against theft. Nothing can start until it is off.
2. Get the authorisation code. Variously called the auth code, the auth info code or the EPP code. It is a one-time secret that proves you asked for this.
3. Start the transfer at the new registrar. You give them the domain and the code, and they initiate it. This is also the point at which you pay, which surprises people who expected the bill at the other end.
4. Approve and wait. Both registrars confirm, the registry moves the record, and the name is yours at the new address.

The fiddly part is never a step. It is the locks.

The sixty-day locks, stated precisely

ICANN's Transfer Policy is the document that governs this, and it lists the circumstances in which a registrar may deny a transfer request. Three of them are sixty-day locks, and they are separate rules that happen to share a number.

Sixty days from registration. A registrar may deny a transfer requested "within 60 days of the creation date as shown in the registry Whois record for the domain name". If a builder registered the name for you last week, it cannot be moved this month, and no amount of asking changes that.

Sixty days from a previous transfer. A domain within sixty days of having been transferred may be denied again, apart from a transfer back to the original registrar. Moving twice in quick succession is not available.

Sixty days from a Change of Registrant. The policy allows a registrar to deny a transfer where it "imposed a 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock following a Change of Registrant, and the Registered Name Holder did not opt out of the 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock prior to the Change of Registrant request".

That third one is the one that catches people, because it is the only one you can trigger yourself. Updating the name or email on the registration record — exactly the tidy-up people do when they finally decide to take ownership of their domain seriously — can start a sixty-day clock. The opt-out has to be exercised before the change, not after. If you intend to both correct your contact details and move registrar, move first.

Wix's own help documentation reflects all three: it states that a domain cannot be transferred within sixty days of purchase, that changing registrant contact information locks the domain for sixty days, and that a completed transfer locks it for a further sixty.

Where the authorisation code is sent

The code goes to the registrant contact email address on the registration record. Not to the address you log into the builder with, unless those happen to be the same.

This is the single most common reason a transfer stalls. If the registration was set up years ago with an address at a company you have left, or an assistant who no longer works there, or a domain whose mail has itself expired, the code has nowhere to land — and fixing the contact record first is exactly the action that may impose the sixty-day lock described above.

Domain privacy adds a second trap. A privacy or proxy service replaces your details in the public record with the provider's, and in some implementations it also intercepts mail sent to the registrant address. Wix's transfer documentation tells you to disable Private Registration before you begin, specifically so you do not miss the transfer emails. Switch privacy off, complete the move, switch it back on at the new registrar.

Check the record before you need the code. The method is on who owns the domain your builder registered, and it takes about a minute.

The two five-day rules

Policy puts deadlines on the registrar you are leaving, and they are worth knowing because they are the difference between a slow transfer and one that has actually gone wrong.

The Transfer Policy requires a registrar to provide the holder with the unique AuthInfo code and to remove clientTransferProhibited within five calendar days of the holder's initial request. The same policy states that this cannot be refused merely because of a payment dispute between the registrar and the domain holder. A company that will not release your code because you disagree about an invoice is not exercising a right.

Separately, the registrar of record must respond to the transfer notification within five calendar days, and if it does not, the transfer proceeds automatically. Silence from the company you are leaving is not a veto. This is why a transfer that appears stuck often completes on its own around day five or six.

Wix's documentation says a transfer usually takes up to seven days to complete, which is consistent with those windows.

What a transfer costs

Leaving is generally free. Squarespace's help centre states that it does not charge a fee to transfer a domain away.

Arriving is not free, and the reason is policy rather than profiteering. Squarespace's own transfer pricing page puts it plainly: the transfer itself is free, but ICANN requires a one-year extension of the registration, which you purchase at the gaining registrar. Crucially, you do not lose what you had already paid for — in Squarespace's words, "you'll keep the time remaining on your registration on top of the extra year you'll register through us".

So a transfer costs one year of registration at the new registrar's price and buys you one year of registration. If that new price is lower than the builder's renewal rate, the transfer pays for itself immediately. There is also a standing ICANN fee on generic top-level domains — GoDaddy publishes it as $0.20 per domain per year for registration, renewal or transfer — which every registrar pays and passes on.

What does not move

A transfer changes the registrar. It changes nothing else, and this is the part that causes unnecessary panic.

Your DNS records — the ones pointing the name at your website and your mail — are held at whichever nameservers the domain currently delegates to. If those nameservers belong to the builder you are leaving, the records survive the transfer and keep working, right up until the builder's account closes and takes the zone with it. That is a genuinely dangerous gap and it is why the safe order is: transfer the registration first, move the DNS zone second, cancel the builder plan last.

Your mailbox does not move either. It is a separate subscription with a separate expiry date, and it keeps running as long as it is paid for, wherever the registration lives. The sequence for keeping mail flowing through all of this is on email on a moving domain.

Domain privacy does not carry across. It is a registrar service, so it ends with the old registrar and has to be switched on again at the new one.

The order that keeps everything up

1. Check the registration record and confirm the registrant contact email is one you can open today.
2. If the contact details are wrong, decide now whether to fix them — and if the transfer matters more, do the transfer first and fix the record afterwards, to avoid the Change of Registrant lock.
3. Confirm the domain is outside all three sixty-day windows.
4. Choose the new registrar and price the extension there. A renewal price published next to the registration price is a useful habit to select for.
5. Unlock the domain, disable privacy, request the code.
6. Start the transfer at the new registrar, pay for the one-year extension, approve the confirmation email.
7. Wait. Up to seven days is normal; five calendar days of silence from the losing registrar is not a failure.
8. Once the name is at the new registrar, recreate your DNS records there, verify mail is still flowing, and only then cancel anything.

For step four, three registrars you could move to are Namecheap, Dynadot and IONOS.

If you are doing this because the renewal price came as a shock, the terms behind that shock are set out on free domain website builder plans, along with what each provider publishes about its own terms. If you are doing it because you are leaving the platform altogether, the domain is the piece to secure first — keep your domain when you move covers the order in which to do everything else.