Who Should Hold Your Domain Name? A Small Business Guide

Your domain name, like yourbusiness.com, is the address for your website and often your email. If you lose control of it, your site and email go down. Yet many business owners do not know who holds it.

You should be the registrant

The registrant is the legal holder of a domain. That should be you or your company, using an email address you control.

A web designer or IT person often registers the domain “to make things easier.” Years later, that person is gone and nobody has the login. Recovering a domain in that situation takes time and paperwork.

How to check who holds your domain

1. Look up your domain on a WHOIS or RDAP lookup tool, such as lookup.icann.org. Many registrars hide personal details for privacy, but you see the registrar name.
2. Log in to the registrar account (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains moved to Squarespace, and others).
3. Confirm the registrant contact is your business and the email is one you check.

Protect your domain

• Turn on auto-renew. An expired domain gets picked up by someone else fast.
• Keep a current card on file.
• Turn on two-factor login on your registrar account.
• Use a business email you control as the account email, not your developer’s email.
• Keep the domain lock on. It blocks unauthorized transfers.

Should your agency hold your domain?

No. Give your agency access as a user or delegate, so they manage DNS for you. Ownership stays with you.

Note: when you change the registrant on a domain, many registrars apply a 60-day transfer lock. Plan ahead before a move.

Domain, hosting, and email are three different things

Your domain is the address. Hosting is where the website files live. Email is often a third service, like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Read website hosting vs domain name for a full breakdown.