Transferring a Domain from Bytemark to Another Provider

Domains are sold and managed by ‘registrars’ (eg, Gandi, GoDaddy, Namecheap). If you’ve bought a domain with Bytemark (hurray!), you might one day decide to transfer it to another registrar. There are two different processes for transferring your domain away from Bytemark depending on whether your domain ends with ‘.uk‘ or not. Please follow the relevant section below.

Domains that end with .uk

Each registrar has a ‘Tag’. For example, the Tag that Bytemark uses is TUCOWS-CA. To transfer your domain to another registrar, you can change the Tag as follows:

1. Contact the new registrar and tell them you want to transfer a .uk domain to them. They will provide you with their IPS ‘Tag’. Make sure you have the correct tag as some may be spelt differently to how they sound!
2. Log into the Bytemark Panel.
3. Click on the ‘Domains’ tab in the menu and click the ‘Registrar tools’ button for the domain you want to transfer. If you don’t see the domain you expect, please contact support for assistance.
4. You will be presented with the tools page for the domain. Double check the information is correct.
5. Ensure the name servers are pointing to the correct location before you process the transfer as changes cannot be made until they appear with the new registrar.
6. When you are ready to perform the transfer, click the ‘Domain Extras’ option on the menu and enter the IPS tag of the new registrar in the ‘New Domain Tag’ text box.
7. Ensure the ‘Apply tag change to all .uk domains in this profile?’ is set to ‘No’.
8. Click the ‘Save Configuration’ button.

Domains not ending with .uk

This typically involves verification by email, and providing a ‘Domain Auth Code’ (sometimes known as an ‘EPP’ key), as per these instructions:

1. Log into the Bytemark Panel.
2. Click on the ‘Domains‘ tab in the menu and locate the relevant domain, then click the ‘Registrar tools‘ button. If you don’t see the domain you expect, please contact support for assistance.
3. Click ‘Domain Locking‘ in the menu.
4. Ensure ‘Disable‘, is selected if it is not already, and click ‘Submit‘.
5. Click ‘Organization‘ in the menu.
6. Check the Email address listed is correct, and is accepting email.
7. Repeat the same check with the information in the ‘Admin‘.
8. Click ‘Domain Extras‘ and make a note of the ‘Domain Auth Code’. This is your proof of domain ownership, and you will need this later, but you shouldn’t typically need to send it to the new registrar.
9. Contact your new registrar, and tell them you want to transfer the domain to them, and they will initiate the process of transferring it into them.
10. Shortly afterwards, you should receive an email at the ‘Organization’ and/or ‘Admin’ email addresses, asking you to confirm the transfer. Be sure to check spam folders for the email.
11. Read the instructions carefully! You will likely be sent to a web form which requests confirmation and asks you to enter your Domain Auth Code.
12. Ensure that all the information is correct before submitting it — especially the name and contact details of the new registrar.
13. Once completed, there will be a few more emails explaining what is going on, and the domain will transfer from Bytemark to the new registrar.
14. To check the status of the transfer, you can use any WHOIS service such as https://who.is — check the ‘Registrar’ field.

Important things to note for all domains

• DNS ‘Hosting’ (where any DNS records are served from) is separate from the selection of registrar, and they don’t need to be the same company. There’s nothing at all stopping you from having your DNS hosted by Bytemark, while the domain is with a different registrar, or vice versa.
• When transferring a domain from Bytemark, you should check that the new registrar will not change the authoritative DNS servers being used by that domain. Some registrars may automatically change this to their authoritative servers which may result in an outage for the domain.
• In order to transfer a domain, it has to be ‘live’, so domains which have expired cannot be transferred to another registrar, and they will need to be renewed or returned to normal status first.