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…

• When initiating a domian transfer, the new registrar requires a EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol) code from the old registrar. Basically, the new registrar will queue the transfer until you (the owner) enters the EPP code.
• Finding the EPP code from Godaddy.com was rather obscure! But basically you need to login to Godaddy, open up the domain you want transferred, and on the bottom of the left colum will be a link that says “Authorization Code: Send by Email”. Clicking on the link will result in an email being sent to the domain owner (the Technical Contact I presume) with the EPP code.
• Enter that EPP code to the new registrar, and then the domain will get cut over.
• If you have Godaddy’s DomainsByProxy, make sure you cancel it. Otherwise you’ll give Godaddy another excuse to abort your domain transfer.

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!

I’ve been doing some ”Internet Entrepreneurship” lately, and have a few projects under development. None that I want to talk about right now though…

Anyway, I had been using Godaddy to register my domain. Originally because of “those” commercials, but mostly because they’re cheap (which if you get some good coupon codes, makes them one of the cheapest registrars out there) and has some reasonably cheap add-ons like domain name privacy and web-hosting. However, as I became more of a “business class” user, I was fnding that their hosting just wasn’t meeting my performance needs and that their technical support really was quite poor (”Google-monkeys” is probably the best that I can say without getting sued). So I struck out in search for a better host…

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