Will my website stay up during the transfer process?

The transfer process will affect your websites down time. However, most registrars are typically very quick at responding to transfer requests. The whole process can be completed within one day, if all the below steps are completed.

Please ensure your domain is unlocked and WHOIS privacy is set to off in your account.

1. The day you purchase your transfer, you will receive an email to the current admin contact email address that is set in your account. Kindly ensure that email address is up to date.

2. You must accept the transfer request via our emailed link.

3. This will send the transfer request to your current registrar and to the Registry.

4. Your registrar will send you an email with instructions on how to approve the transfer in your account. Your registrar usually sends that email on the same day as we send the request to them

5. Once you approve the transfer with your registrar, they will notify the Registry it is approved.

6. Your transfer should complete with that day's batch at around 2am PST. Then you will be able to see and manage the domain in your Cosmotown account.

7. If you are using third party nameservers (whoever's your website is hosted with) that setting will import automatically and your site should start resolving immediately.

If you are using GoDaddy nameservers, and need to point your domain to a hosted account using the A Record, CNAME or URL forwarding, you will need to update those settings in your Cosmotown account

Then, you will need to wait for these DNS changes to propagate across the internet. Internet Service Providers update their caches at different intervals. It can take up to 48-72 hours for them to update your cache, and your site will be down during the time. However, typically it's much sooner, from a couple of hours to 24 hours.