What the registrar controls
Renewals and auto-renew, the transfer lock, the contact details, the name servers the domain points to and often the DNS zone itself. If the registrar account is lost, closed or unpaid, the domain is at risk regardless of how well the website is run.
Why agencies should know it
For generic top-level domains, ICANN’s Expired Registration Recovery Policy requires registrars to notify the registrant about one month and one week before expiry and again within five days after, which only helps if those notices reach someone who acts. Many client domains were registered by a former developer using a personal email address.
A register to keep
One line per client domain is enough: the domain, the registrar, the registrant (the client’s company, not a former developer), whose account holds it, the auto-renew payment method and its card expiry month, whether two-factor authentication is on, and the expiry date. Before a transfer the registrar issues an authorisation code and the transfer lock must be lifted, so know in advance who can do both.
When a client wants to move to another registrar, the agency should be able to explain the steps: unlock the domain, obtain the code, approve the transfer, then check afterwards that the nameservers, the auto-renew setting and the contact addresses are what you expect.
What to check
Which registrar holds each client domain, in whose name, with which payment method and which contact address, and whether two-factor authentication is on.
Sources
Read on . Standards and vendor pages change; confirm the current text before you rely on it.
- ICANN, Expired Registration Recovery Policy (www.icann.org)