Transferring a Domain to or from Linuxweb Print

What a domain transfer is, and is not

A domain transfer moves the registration of your domain, the entry in the registry and who you pay to keep it, from one provider to another. It is a separate thing from moving your website's files or your email: those are covered further down, because the domain, the files, and the mailboxes move in different ways, and knowing which is which is most of what makes a move go smoothly.

Transferring to us: the process

1. Let your current provider know you intend to transfer. A quick heads-up on your side means the approval request that follows is expected rather than ignored, and ignored requests are what make transfers fail.
2. Place your order. Add your domain as a transfer while signing up for a hosting plan, or order the domain transfer on its own, a domain ordered without hosting automatically receives our free parking account, so it always has a home with us either way. Everything runs through the order process itself, there are no forms to email and no ticket to open.
3. Pay the invoice. Once payment is confirmed and your order accepted, our system sends the transfer request to the registry. For international domains (.com, .net, .org and similar) you will need the domain's EPP code from your current provider, requested from them before you order, and the domain must be unlocked on their side.
4. Approve the request, or make sure it gets approved. The registry's approval email goes to either you or your current service provider, and privacy legislation such as POPIA and the GDPR means we are unable to see or tell you which. So cover both ends: watch your own inbox for it, and tell your current provider the request is on its way so they action it if it lands with them.
5. Wait out the approval window. There is a five-day period for the request to be answered, and our system notifies you the moment the transfer succeeds or fails.

How the five-day window plays out

• Approved: the transfer completes, and you are notified.
• Denied: the transfer fails immediately, and you are notified. Contact your current provider to find out why before trying again.
• No response at all, .co.za domain: the request lapses and the transfer fails after the five days. This is the most common failure, and it is almost always an approval email sitting unread somewhere, which is why steps 1 and 4 above matter.
• No response at all, international domain: the transfer proceeds automatically once the five days pass.

After approval, the domain is pointed at your hosting and the change spreads across the internet over anything up to 48 hours, the propagation window explained in our article on what nameservers are and, for the email side, our article on email problems after a nameserver or DNS change.

No hosting plan? The domain still has a home

• Free parking comes automatically with any domain ordered without hosting. It reserves your domain's place with us, nothing more, ideal for a name you are holding for later.
• Parking with redirect, at a low annual fee to cover the traffic, lets a parked domain actually do things: redirect visitors to another domain, or carry the DNS records needed to run Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 email on the domain, all without a hosting plan. If your domain exists mainly for email hosted elsewhere, this is the product built for exactly that.

Either can be upgraded to full hosting later without touching the domain again, the transfer never needs redoing.

Your website files and email: what moves and how

• If your current provider uses cPanel, we can transfer your entire hosting account, the website, its databases, and your mailboxes with all their mail, across to our servers. This is the clean, complete move, and worth telling us about in the order notes or a support ticket so we handle it as one job.
• If your current provider does not use cPanel, we can migrate your website's files and databases, but email cannot be transferred at all, mailboxes are created fresh on our side and old mail stays behind. Before the old service is cancelled, download or back up any mail you need to keep, and do it early, once a lapsed account is deleted at the old provider, that mail is gone beyond anyone's reach.
• The website migration itself is offered as an optional service at a fixed once-off fee during the order process. Skipped it at order time and changed your mind? A support ticket adds it afterwards.

Before you start: the short checklist

• The domain must be active, not expired. An expired domain generally cannot transfer until it is renewed where it currently sits, and the cost of leaving it to lapse is covered in our article on domain expiry and renewal.
• International domains must be unlocked and have their EPP code, and cannot transfer within 60 days of registration or of a previous transfer, a registry rule with no exceptions.
• Start well clear of the renewal date. A five-day approval window and a looming expiry are a bad combination.

Transferring a domain away from us

We would rather keep you, and if something drove you here, a ticket saying so gives us one chance to fix it. That said, your domain is yours, and leaving is straightforward, with two things to know up front.

The account must be paid up in full. We release a domain once there is nothing outstanding on the account it belongs to, and not before.

The approval request usually comes to us, not to you. On most domains under our management the administrative contact is our own domains address, for the fraud reasons explained in our article on updating your account and contact details. So do not sit waiting for an email that may never reach your inbox, tell us you intend to transfer and we will handle the approval from our side. Not every domain is set up this way, so you may receive it directly, but assume we are the ones being notified unless we tell you otherwise.

For international domains, request the EPP code via support ticket and we will supply it along with unlocking the domain, no delay tactics and no exit fees. For .co.za domains, start the transfer at your new provider and let us know, the same five-day approval window applies in reverse. Any hosting with us continues separately until you cancel it, transfers and hosting cancellations are independent decisions, and doing them in the wrong order can take a working website down before its replacement is ready.

Good to know

A transferring domain stays fully operational throughout, the website and email keep working from the old hosting until the move to ours happens, so there is no forced downtime built into the process. The sequence that makes it seamless is: transfer approved, website and mail moved or created on our side, then DNS pointed across, and our system and the articles linked above walk you through each of those in turn. A detail that surprises people: transferring an international domain typically includes a year's renewal in the price, so the expiry date extends as part of the move, while a .co.za transfer carries its existing expiry date over unchanged.