I registered my domain elsewhere for 5 years, can I bring it with me?

We advise against paying for a domain name far in advance. A .nl domain, for example, cannot be registered and paid for more than one year in advance with SIDN. If you still pay a provider for multiple years, that provider receives the money all at once and pays for the domain itself each year. That's a risk: if the provider goes bankrupt, or if you want to transfer, you lose that money.

For .com and other extensions, we also recommend paying per year. Some extensions can be registered and paid for a longer period, but even then you may lose money when you transfer. That's because when you transfer, you pay again at your new provider.

Have you already registered the name for a longer period and still want to move to another hosting company? Then you can leave the domain name with your old provider and only take hosting with the new provider (with us, of course). You then point the domain's nameservers to your new hosting package. Read Hosting package for a domain that stays with another provider. Once the registration with your old provider expires, you can still transfer the domain to us, see How do I transfer my domain to WebOké?.

You might enjoy reading: The history of the domain name