Today, I found a cool domain name to register (for a future project). I decided to use namecheap.com for the registration. $7.99 (with coupon code) was pretty darn cheap for a .com registration, with free WhoisGuard protection.
While I was there, I finally bit the bullet and decided to transfer some of my current domains from Godaddy.com to namecheap.com. Turns out, it isn’t as easy as you might expect! Getting namecheap to initiate the transfer process was simple enough, but getting Godaddy to release the domains was a lot more obscure (can’t say I blame them, they’re losing a customer after all!). So here’s what I learnt…
Once you know this “trick” it’s simple enough. But just a quick google shows that there are many webmasters out there wondering why Godaddy doesn’t release domains and what they can do about it. Now I know, and hopefully so do you
James posted a really useful hint in the comments below. Basically, if you go to Godaddy’s Domain Management page, there’s a menu option for “Pending Transfers” on the left side. If you go in there, you can manually approve any pending transfers. That’ll reduce the transfer time from days to hours. Thanks for the great tip James!
The interface of GoDaddy is so cluttered and irritating. I have since transfered all my domains to NameCheap and even suggested them to provide information to users transferring on how to get EPP code from GoDaddy. I had to come to this site to find out.
I also like how NameCheap doesn’t try to add 0.25 LATER to the advertised price.
It’s also worth noting that (even when everything is “approved”) GoDaddy will not release the domain for another 3-5 days. So plan ahead when trying to transfer domains out of GoDaddy
thank you for this post. i was already quiet desperat as i didn’t find a way to get the code.
Thank you very much for this post. It was really helpful to me!
Thank you very much. I also moved one of my domains to namecheap.com. I like their services and good and convenient management tools. GoDaddy.com did a good job improving their domain management panel though it’s still too non usable
Thank you, you’ve helped me quite a bit.
Another point to note is that GoDaddy is no different than any other registrar out there when it comes to transfers. This is not to say that it is right to try and make it as hard as possible for people to take their business elsewhere but try transferring domains away from Network Solutions and you will have just as much trouble.
Also, the interface at GoDaddy does have a lot of information presented in it, but for a person like myself who spends a lot of time managing various domains for my employer it actually is easier to use than others. Generally when I am in the admin tool I know what I need to do and GoDaddy’s no-frills admin system is all I need to get the job done.
I’m transferring all my domains over to namecheap. This article was a huge help. Thanks!
I was wondering why GoDaddy wasn’t sending me anything telling me that someone was trying to transfer my domain and how to do it if I wanted it to.
So GoDaddy didn’t send me any emails about authorizing the transfer, not that I recall. Now they want me to, but I don’t know where to do it.
Any ideas?
It’s been awhile since I did my last transfer, but I believe the process is/was: 1) Namespace - Submit domain to transfer 2) Godaddy - Get EPP 3) Namespace - Enter EPP 4) Godaddy - Will send you email begging you not to transfer, which you can ignore 5) Namespace - Will send you email to confirm the transfer, which you need to click on the link 6) Transfer is complete Steps 4 - 6 might take around 1 week.
The emails should go to the Admin contact (I’m not 100% sure, as all my contact details are the same). Make sure you don’t have a spam filter catching it…
Oh, you should also make sure Godaddy doesn’t have the domain locked, and that you have disabled “Domains By Proxy” (otherwise, it’ll abort the transfer a week into the process).
Gracias!!
Wow searching Godaddy’s site for EPP code came up with nothing. Glad I found your site, I woulda never figured it out! I was going to renew on Godaddy but I’m tired of the 10 pages you have to go through to do it..
Thanks for posting this! I have been on hold for half an hour with GoDaddy, and have searched their site trying to get an answer. Thankfully, I found your post while still on hold.
I haven’t minded GoDaddy, or their service, to be honest. But I can’t resist the free whois from Namecheap. I wrote in and gave GoDaddy an opportunity to match the Namecheap offer to keep my 50-some domains, but they didn’t meet the challenge.
So bye-bye GoDaddy, and hello Namecheap.
God I hate GoDaddy namecheap > godaddy, it is full of crap - whenever you push or buy a domain you have to go through about 8 pages of their ’special offers’ unlike godaddy Namecheap is a lot less spammy.
Thanks a lot for this information :).
Thank you so much for this EPP tip! I would definitely have trouble finding this one. GoDaddy site is the very essence of clutter and I’m horrified each time I have to use it.
Now they also have a bug which breaks their site when I try to make a payment and their support doesn’t want to get into details and help me. I wasted few days trying different things and found no fix (it must be something on their side) so I decided to drop these losers and find myself a proper domain registrar.
Namecheap seems to be a good choice (although their name is terrible ).
I just thought this tid-bit might be helpful to others, and this seemed a somewhat appropriate place to leave it.
After you’ve given your new registrar the EPP Code, you’ll get an email from GoDaddy which says you don’t need to respond unless you want to cancel. Well, respond anyway! Manually log into your account–I don’t click links in emails from GoDaddy–then go to the domain management section and approve the transfer. I just transfered two domains and both finished in about an hour. Being proactive is a good thing! (TM)
Now, I just need to transfer the rest of my domains…
Hi,
Found your site while attempting to transfer a domain which GoDaddy was holding hostage in lieu of a $75.00 ransom they required for release of the name for transfer because I had supposedly violated their TOS. After warring with them for several weeks, apparently one of their robots in support services unlocked the domain inadvertantly. I immediately seized upon the moment and initiated a transfer. All went well until I was asked for the EPP. I emailed GoDaddy and to my surprise they sent it to me. Entered code, things move on. Next day I receive an email from GoDaddy confirming request for transfer, telling me to log into my account and click decline if I wanted to decline this transfer, or do nothing if I accepted it and it would be complete in about four working days. Wow, what a lesson I have learned even though GoDaddy made it as difficult as everything else you try to do with them. I logged into my account, clicked “pending tranfers” and found a very confusing setup which included a button labeled “accept/decline”. Naturally I’m going, “So which is it?” I clicked it and it lead me to a page to accept or decline the transfer. Of course I clicked, “accept:. Lo and behold, my transfer went through immediately. No four day wait. Do they want you to know this? Right. However I thought everyone who has wrestled this beast might be interested in how to more quickly free one’s self from it’s grasp.
thanks for the post. it was very helpful. I hate godaddy, too many stuffs there to figure out, namecheap is straight forward and i like it a lot better than godaddy. i once tried to register a domain an in the process of checking out, they added i dont know what and at checkout the amount came to be like $20 or something. namecheap is a lot better from my experiece, very easy to use and no hidden stuffs.
thanx again.
Thanks! This is really helpful where I can’t even found the authorization code all the time in godaddy until i have drop by your site from google.
Godaddy has become a horrible train wreck in all aspects. I’ve tried to transfer domains away from them in the past. If you paid extra for their private registration, they make it extremely inconvenient to transfer.
These things can be done in minutes. Godaddy seems to delay the process every step of the way just to inconvenience you for leaving them. 4 days? Give me a break.
Please, help me. I don’t see this link: “Authorization Code: Send by Email” (GoDaddy’s Domain Manager v.4.1)
Log into Godaddy, and go to Domain Manager (where you see all the domains you own).
Click on the domain name. On the new page, you’ll see a light green area (just under the icons). On the bottom left of that light green area will be “Authorization Code: Send by Email” (where “Send by Email” is a clickable link).
Thanks much, im so sick of godaddy and moving 5 domains to namecheap.com
Thanks alot for that mate!!!! you reaally helped me:) Thanks to all the people who made comments as well, thats really helpul as well, i have just sent a request, hopefully it works out well, cheerS:)
After I found better deal at another registrar, I decided to transfer 2 domains of clients. As I was filling up my account at the new registrar, my heart stopped when they informed me that I had to go back to GoDaddy to get my EPPs. I had no clue and I knew that this company was not going to make it easy to go away with some registrations. I did a search for EPP on their search engine with no result.
Thanks to you I got exactly what I was looking for!
Thanks so much for this tip! I’m sick to death of being hammered with Godaddy’s dozens of irritating ‘upselling’ pages whenever I want to do the smallest transaction with them, their insane $20 charge whenever some nutbar tries to TOS one of my domains, & their spammer-friendliness. Now I can dump GoDaddy. ;^)
Good info, I wish i googled before i sent the support request, but might be funny to see how long it takes.
Thanks for the tips! just gave the request and it has been queed!
I can’t find a place to approve manualy as James said… can anyone point me the proper place?
[...] failing to find the EPP code on their site, I went to Google and did a search. Thanks to this great site I found the answer and it was again easy peasy. [...]
Authorization Code: Send by Email .. doesn’t appear on non .com .net domains .. I’ve had to email support to ask for the damn thing (EPP) to be emailed to me! I concur with many of the sentiments expressed here. Not only are Godaddy bloated but there hosting support (you’d think bigger=better) sucks. I manage hundreds of godaddy registered domains (pretty much all .com) we’ll probably be moving them soonish Cheers for this heads up! - seki-
Thanks so much for this helpful information. Like everyone has pointed above Godaddy has dropped the ball on many of their loyal customers.
Namecheap seems to be the popular choice of the day. I was surprised to see many comments talking about transferring to Namecheap, just as I was planning to do the same.
Hey Mate,
Thanks for the post, the approach GoDaddy have taken of throwing as much advertising in your face as they possibly can has really cluttered their interface and slowed down the site. Goodbye GoDaddy, hello Namecheap!
Thanks again
I’ve been buying domains through moniker lately because I don’t like godaddy’s interface, plus godaddy does some pretty shady things. I own the .net version of a domain and when the .com became available godaddy bought it up and decided to offer it to me for 600$. I ignored the emails and sure enough a couple weeks later it was available for the regular price.
This isn’t illegal, but it’s pretty underhanded.
Wow, I googled your post and it was very helpful. Especially the part about manual approval in the control panel.
Hello,
After reading your post, I pressed the accept button and forced the godaddy to leave my domain. Now when I do whois of my domain then the registrar shown is 1and1 (to which I am transferring) but it also shows the domain is not registered with 1and1. Can you suggest me how long it takes for the new registrar to get that domain after it has been released by old registrar.
Thanks for the information. GoDaddy is a good registrar (take it from someone who has worked tons with every other one). They only have a few downfalls. -They are a little “white trash” in the marketing and presentation -Pretty sick of looking at Danica (she’s a bitch and her site was farmed out bad - look it over and laugh) -Holy freaking overuse of AJAX! If you want to know where TOO FAR is - use dcc.godaddy. Wow.
Good things: -They answer the phone and help you -Prices are reasonable -ByProxy is now about$10/year (yeah!!!!) -Total DNS control will cover you pretty well (until you need to do the funky stuff with DNS and even then GODaddy is a good stepping stone out to custom dns management)
And for the record - avoid register.com and in particular enom!
–Nahtass
I have hundreds of domains registered with eNom and have never had a problem they haven’t fixed quickly and satisfactorily.
I was a 1PLANHOST customer, reliably and with no complaints, till it all went sick as the got bought out… since then i have had problem after problem, a full list of trouble and next to no help from GODADDY/WILDWEST. then they sold my domain for auction after i missed its re-newal ( i got no warning from GODADDY that it was set to expire…to a bloodsucking leach who wants to return it to me fora kings ransom… best way to migrate away or transfer registration from these bloodsuckers is not to have anything to do with them in the first place…. sorry i cant be more helpfull F**** GODADDY and the scum they spawn. )
Thanks for the help! I didn’t know where to find the EPP code (or how to obtain one) from GoDaddy and I absolutely hate having to click on every link to find out where one single thing is, so this post was definitely a time-saver. Thanks again
cant thank you enough, found this page by google, and it really helped me expedite some of my domains out of go daddy smoothly.
Thank you very much for this information. I had a bunch of domains at godaddy and I started transfering them to namecheap because not only they have a great service but their prices are much cheaper than godaddy. When I was asked for the EPP code I searched a bit and couln’t find it because as many other things Godaddy kinda “hides” this code. With a quick search on google I came across your website and I had to bookmark it.
Keep up the good work.
GODADDY GOT TO HELL!! thank you for this tip!!, the godaddy interface is a horrible maze of confusion and incessant upselling, trying to sell you crap at every mouse click. Can’t wait to transfer all my domains from this HORRIBLE REGISTRAR/provideder!
Thanks so much! Godaddy is awful.
I got the email from “send by email” but all that is listed in the email is “Authorization Info: xxxxxxxx”. So is that EPP code?
Godaddy, btw, is by far the worst possible domain registrar I’ve ever come across. They over charge for what you get and then try to make you buy every other feature that many of the other places include for free with the domain (and still charge the same price). I seriously don’t understand how they got so popular!?
thanks, finally got it while others are talking about how to do it on the domain list page which is not longer available.
THANK YOU for this. You’re very kind!
Thanks for sharing this info. Very helpful!
may you be blessed with many karma points for this post. your spot at the top of google is well-deserved.
Thank you and your commenters for making this easy.
Thanks! I am in the procsess of transferring from Godaddy to Name Cheap, and this guide was very helpful
Thank you so much for this. Saved a lot of time and headaches.
Thank you! This info come up right away on google by just typing in “EPP authorization code”. Nice easy to understand instructions.
=)
Thank you, that makes it so much easier. You’d think the new domain recipient would have a little cloud next to EPP describing what it is, and how to obtain it. You can’t proceed in an transfer, and order, without the EPP; that should be the first info they ask for!!
THANKYOU for posting this information … I was doing the exact same thing, changing from go-daddy to namecheap and couldn’t for the life of me figure out where to find the EPP code on go-daddy. Their site is so confusing and hard to find anything on there when you need it. This was very helpful, thanks a bunch!
godaddy ????? — never again for me. @Roger “cluttered and irritating” is right and equates to time and frustration on a users part.
Thanks! I was wondering if the authorization code was the EPP. This helps a lot! -Elmernite
Elmernite