HOWTO: Transfer a .co.uk domain away from UKReg / Fasthosts

 The Top-Level Domain  ‘.co.uk’ is managed by a UK company known as Nominet.  For .co.uk domains, it’s best to choose a registrar that is a Nominet Member. All Nominet Members are bound by the rules and guidelines set down by Nominet.

UK Reg (Fasthosts) is a Nominet Member so they can not block your request to transfer, and in fact they have never been known to do so.  However, if for some reason transfer is blocked, you can apply to Nominet to transfer your domain to a Member of your choice for a one-off fee of £10.

Go to the Nominet Site that deals with finding a Registrar, read the guide and look at the list of members.

1) Choose a new Registrar. 

If you have a .co.uk domain name, you can transfer away in less than 24 hours usually for no fee. For example, Heart Internet will accept your .co.uk for free and has an offer of 9p for renewals – we can’t find a cheaper renewal price than that from any company we know. Anyway, choose a company you like and find out the Nominet IPS TAG for that company. Most hosting companies make this information readily available since this makes it easy for you to become their customer.

2) Find out your Nameservers.

Before you change your registrar, log into your Fasthosts Control Panel and check that the nameservers are already set to:

ns1.livedns.co.uk ns2.livedns.co.uk

If you can’t log into your Fasthosts Control Panel, this is just the reason why you should always keep your domain seperate from your hosting account.  You can however use the Nominet WhoIS tool to see this information.  Just enter your domain name into the box and look for your nameservers in the resulting output.

If you are using different nameservers, this guide may not be right for you. Before doing anything else, check with whoever set this site up for you in the beginning, perhaps a web designer and ask why the nameservers are not set to ‘livedns.co.uk’ (Fasthosts) servers.  There may be valid reasons, post here if you have any questions.

 3) Open an account with your chosen registrar.

You may need to register an account with your chosen registrar company and make sure you can log in. Then follow their instructions to arrange for the transfer.

4) Tell Fasthosts you want to transfer the domain. 

Fortunately, this is an automatic tool, very simple and quick.

OK, to transfer the domains, log into your Fasthost Control Panel and look for the link to ‘Transfer Options’, usually somewhere on the left. When you click on this, you will be taken to a page where you can enter the IPS Tag for the domain. The IPS Tag for Heart Internet is HEARTINTERNET, so you might enter that value in the box, and click on ‘Continue’ (Click on the example below):

Once that is complete, within 24 hours, your domain name is marked with the IPS Tag, and your registrar will be able to do so instantly on your request.  Note that your domain is not yet transferred, you have just used Fasthosts to tell Nominet that it’s OK to transfer to the company who owns the IPS Tag.

5) Transfer into your new Registrar

Log into your new registrar account, and follow their instructions on how to transfer the domain, preserving the current nameservers on the domain. If this means nothing to you, call the company and ask for their support. This is a good time to test their attitude on the support lines.

If for any reason you decide you don’t like that registrar, until you have transferred out, you can just go back into your Fasthosts Account and change your IPS Tag to another Nominet Member.

When the process is complete, you should check your new registrar account and make sure that your nameservers are set to the same value as before (ns1.livedns.co.uk, ns2.livedns.co.uk).

Your website is still hosted by Fasthosts, but your domain name is now with a different registrar.