Some small business owners have no idea who actually owns their domain name and who should manage their domain name. After setting up a website and passing everything over to a web agency, it is easy to assume it's all taken care of - sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.
However, when something goes wrong such as the domain name expiring without renewal, the agency goes bust, or you fall out with your developer, you can discover the hard way that you don't actually control one of your most important business assets.
Let me explain how this works, and what you should do about it.
The difference between a registrar and a registrant
There are two roles you need to understand.
What is a domain registrant?
The registrant is the owner. That's the person or business whose name the domain is registered in. If your business is called Smith & Sons Ltd, then Smith & Sons Ltd should be the registrant. Full stop. This is your name, your brand, your address on the internet and nobody else should own it.
What is a domain registrar?
The registrar is the company you buy the domain through - a business that is accredited to sell and manage domain registrations. Your web agency might well be a registrar, or they might use one, such as GoDaddy or 123 Reg and that's perfectly fine. The agency can manage the domain on your behalf, but the registrant details: the ownership record, should show your business, not theirs.
This distinction matters enormously because, if your agency is listed as the registrant and you part ways with them, you could find yourself in a very ugly dispute over something that should be entirely yours.
Who should be responsible for domain name renewal
Domain names are not a one-off purchase, they need annually. Miss the renewal date and the domain lapses. Someone else can register it, your website vanishes and your email stops working. Customers trying to reach you get an error or, worse, land on a page that has nothing to do with you.
So who should handle renewal? The honest answer is: it doesn't matter, as long as someone is clearly responsible and you know who that is.
Many businesses are happy for their web agency to handle renewals as part of an ongoing web hosting agreement. That's sensible, provided you have it in writing, you receive confirmation when renewals happen and you are kept informed of expiry dates. The danger comes when nobody has formally agreed who is responsible and the renewal simply falls through the cracks.
What does Nominet do?
If your domain ends in .co.uk, .uk or .org.uk, you are in British territory. These are UK country-code domains and they are overseen by an organisation called Nominet.
Nominet is the official registry for UK domain names. They don't sell domains directly to the public (that's what registrars are for) but they hold the authoritative database of who owns what. Every .co.uk, .uk and .org.uk domain is ultimately recorded with Nominet, regardless of which registrar you bought it through.
If there is ever a dispute about who owns a domain, Nominet has a dispute resolution process. Nominet's records are the definitive record of ownership, and you can check any UK domain through their WHOIS service to see who the registrant is.
Nominet also sets the rules that registrars must follow when selling and managing UK domains, so there is a proper regulatory framework protecting you - but only if your registrant details are correct in the first place.
What about .com domains
If your domain ends in .com, the situation is different. The .com registry is managed by a US company called Verisign, and the overall governance of .com domains falls under ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - which is a US-based organisation. This doesn't mean you can't own a .com domain as a British business, millions of British businesses do. But it does mean the regulatory framework is American rather than British, and dispute resolution processes work differently.
For most small and medium-sized British businesses, a .co.uk or .uk domain is perfectly appropriate and keeps you firmly within a well-regulated British framework. Many businesses sensibly register both: the .co.uk and the .com, to protect their brand and make sure a competitor or opportunist can't snap up the other version.
What can I do to check who renews my domain?
Check who the registrant is on your domain. If it's your agency's name rather than yours, ask them to transfer it to you - a reputable agency will do this without fuss and if they won't, that tells you something important.
Make sure you know when your domain expires and if this is something you do yourself – make a note in the diary to renew at least six weeks before the date.
You can confirm in writing with your agency who is responsible for renewal and what happens if they fail to renew on time.
And if you have a .co.uk or .uk domain, check the Nominet record to make sure everything looks as it should.
Your domain name is not a technical detail - it is the address of your business on the internet, and needs to be managed as such.