Who actually owns your domain name? Here's how to check

Your domain name is the one thing your website and your email both hang off. If it lapses, or the wrong person has the keys, both can stop working. And yet plenty of owners couldn't tell you whose name it's actually in.

Paying the renewal doesn't make it yours. Neither does having your company name in it. Here's how to check, in plain English, and what to do if the answer isn't you.

Three questions, not one

"Who owns the domain?" is really three separate questions, and the answers are often different people.

Whose name is it registered in? This is the registrant: the person or company the domain is registered to. ICANN, which runs the system for .com and friends, calls them the "registered name holder". For a business domain, this should be your business.

Who can log in to the account it sits in? Domains are bought through a registrar (GoDaddy, 123 Reg, Namecheap, Cloudflare and so on), and they sit inside someone's account there. That might be yours, your web designer's, or a former member of staff's.

Who pays the renewal? Usually whoever's card is on that account. If that card expires and nobody notices the emails, the domain eventually lapses.

The usual way this goes wrong is innocent. Someone set up the website years ago, bought the domain in their own account to save time, and has since moved on. Everything works until it needs renewing, moving or changing.

How to check, this afternoon

Find the registrar. Your web person, your old invoices, or a search of your inbox for the domain name plus "renewal" will usually turn it up. A public lookup will show the registrar and expiry date too, though these days it often won't show you the owner's name.

Get into the account. If it's yours, log in. If it's someone else's, ask them for access or ask them to move it to an account in your name. Don't settle for a screenshot.

Look at the registrant details. Once you're in, find the contact or owner details for the domain. You want your business's legal name and an email address someone at your business actually reads. Not a person who left in 2019, and not the web designer.

Check the expiry date and auto-renew. Note the date. Turn on auto-renew, check the card on file is current, and put a reminder in the calendar a month before, just in case.

If it's a .uk domain

For .uk domains (.co.uk, .uk, .org.uk and so on), the registry is Nominet, and it keeps its own record of who the registrant is, separate from your registrar account.

When you register a .uk domain, Nominet automatically sets up an Online Services account for the registrant. You get into it with the email address used to register the domain. From there the registrant can update contact details, switch registrar, or hand the domain over to someone else.

Handing it over is called a registrant transfer. Nominet's fee schedule lists it at £10 plus VAT per domain. Some registrars will handle it for you, so ask yours first.

One thing to know: Nominet is changing how .uk transfers work, with a transition day set for 9 February 2027. If you're doing this after that, check your registrar's current instructions rather than relying on an old guide. Including this one.

If it's a .com or similar

To move a .com, .net or .org to a registrar account you control, you'll need a transfer code (often called an auth code or EPP code) from the current registrar. Many let you generate it yourself. If not, ICANN's FAQ for domain holders says the registrar must provide it "within five (5) calendar days of your request".

Two practical tips. Do the move to the new registrar first, then update the owner details, because changing the owner can stop the domain being transferred for a while. And don't leave it until the week it expires, because a domain that has lapsed may need restoring first, which can mean an extra fee.

If the person won't co-operate

Asking nicely usually works. People forget, rather than refuse.

If someone has gone quiet, gather what shows the domain is your business's: invoices, set-up emails, proof you paid. Then talk to the registrar, and for a .uk domain, to Nominet. A solicitor's letter is the last step, not the first.

While you're at it

If the domain was in someone else's account, the chances are the hosting, the DNS settings and the email were too. It's worth checking the lot in one go. The team at Dev Partners have a good checklist for when your developer has left, which covers domains, hosting, code and passwords, and it's useful even if nobody has left yet.

The short version

1. Find out which registrar your domain is with.
2. Make sure it's in an account your business controls.
3. Make sure the registrant is your business, with an email someone reads.
4. Turn on auto-renew and check the card.

That's an afternoon's work, at most. If the domain turns out to be the tip of it, that's what my fix-up projects are for. I sort out who owns what, get it into your name, and write it all down so the next person doesn't have to guess.