What happens to my domain name if my registrar closed?

[zoogo]

If my registrar just packs up shop and leaves the game, what happens to the domain I've got with them?

If something bad, how would I get it back?

In two situations I would like to know,

a. if they file bankruptcy and give users time in advance to remove domains, but my 60 day initial period is not up
b. if they just out of no where collapse and do not come back.

Thank you

 

[bobbarato]

I'm no expert in this stuff. (I did manage to get all of my domains out of registerfly though) But here's my story. I bought a few domains on Ebay for like $1.33 each. I think I was drinking at the time because the names are pretty bad. The names were with a registrar called fleabytes.com I tried going to that url a few weeks ago and it went to Amazon. I'm like WTF?

So I type in one of the domain names in a whois and I see that I still own it but now the registrar is Wild Wild West. So I try to log in with but no dice. I guess I'll have to call them up but I am not sure it is worth it. DON'T DRINK AND DOMAIN! When Registerfly went KAPUT didn't ENOM pickup the pieces(Rfly was an enom reseller before they became a registrar?)

 

[snowbird]

Wild Wild West? Sounds like your fleabytes.com might be a godaddy or wild west domains reseller.

In regards to RegisterFly, many registrars helped to support the effort of moving domains out of there. Godaddy helped, enom helped, etc. RegisterFly was the first ICANN accredited registrar to ever lose accredidation as far as I know.

nudu: If you register with a domain reseller and the reseller closes up shop, the registrar usually has a master account for this reason. All domains would be sent to the master reseller account so you could continue to manage the domains.

In regards to a registrar closing up shop, they should give you enough notice about the situation at hand. In most cases if a registrar cant afford to stay open, another company may buy them out like with what happened with Stargate. Stargate was a registrar and decided to no longer offer registrations. So they sold their domains division to another company and the customers continued to do business under the new company.

Any quality registrar will always give you a heads up of what is going on. Also remember that you are the registrant of the domain. So if the registrar goes kaput and you still have 3 years left on the domain, I would imagine the registry and ICANN would take over the situation in some way to make sure you can continue the registration period elsewhere.

You could also probably get a better explanation by reading your registrar's terms of service agreement and reading some literature on the ICANN website.

 

[ulasbbtr]

That's why ICANN is collecting quarterly fees and registration fees from their accredited registrars. To keep this business safe.

 

[Kate]

Well icann turned a blind eye on regfly until regfly stopped paying their fees to them...

 

[BigSotong.com]

My advice is...always register your names with established registrars. There are over 800 registrars, but you should reg your names with the top 50, you are safe.

Apartly from registerfly, the recent registrar that was kicked out from ICANN is estdomain. Next may be onlinenic.com. If you are asking because you have names with onlinenic, my advice is transfer them out and have a peaceful night.

 

[Gerrit]

I have a slightly different question... How reliable is it to register a less common extention? For example I would like to buy a Turkish domain given my personal relation to the country, but the registrations mostly go directly via the registry nic.tr. Is this completely safe, does ICANN also control their activities to ensure they won't go out of business soon?

With .com etc you can always transfer away in time if you become suspicious, but what about extentions where only a handful of registrars offer them? What to do with your domain then if the only registration point would become unstable?

 

[Kate]

Icann has no say over the ccTLDs, once they are delegated. Each country is free to use its own TLD as it deems fit and appropriate
I have no particular reservations about .tr but some third world registries are not trustworthy.

 

[NathanJacob]

Recently there was a news about EST Domains managing about 280,000 domain names were de-accredited for spam, spyware, and other nefarious activities. In the end, ICANN found an easier way to terminate EstDomains by transferring the domain names to other ICANN accredited domain name registrars according to the procedures in ICANN’s Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy-

Finally ResellerClub - one of the top ICANN Registrars took over the EST Domains and SSL Certificate operations.

 

[cobainer]

Finally ResellerClub - one of the top ICANN Registrars took over the EST Domains and SSL Certificate operations.

Hey Nathan, ResellerClub is not a registrar in itself...Their registrar is DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM...