Domain ownership and transfer

In shortThe whole thing on one screen

Whose name is the domain in?: Yours, from day one
Who pays for it?: We do, while you subscribe
What does it cost you?: Nothing on top of your subscription
If you cancel?: You keep it. We hand over control, free
How long does the handover take?: Within 5 working days of you asking
Who pays renewals after that?: You do, roughly £10 to £15 a year

Section 1You are the owner, and you always were

When we register your domain name, we register it in your name and with your details as the owner. In the language the domain industry uses, you are the registrant. Not Deftly. Not a holding company. You.

This is not something we do when you leave. It is how it is set up from the first day, before you have even paid your second month. There is no moment at which we own your domain and then give it to you, because we never owned it.

What we do hold. We manage the domain on your behalf while you are with us: we hold the account at the registrar that the domain sits in, we pay for it, we point it at your website, and we keep the renewal ticking over. That is management, not ownership. Ownership is recorded against your name.

You can check this yourself at any time. Ask us and we will tell you which registrar your domain is with and confirm the owner details recorded against it.

Section 2What the domain costs, and who pays

Your first month with us is £49 rather than £29 precisely because it includes buying your domain and doing the admin around it. After that, renewals are included in your £29 a month for as long as you subscribe. There is no separate domain bill and no surprise charge at renewal time.

We register a .co.uk domain by default, because that is what most UK trade customers want and it is what customers searching for you expect. If you would rather have a different ending, tell us and we will look at it.

If the name you want costs more than a standard domain

We cover the cost of a standard, normally priced domain. A small number of names are sold as premium domains and cost far more, sometimes hundreds or thousands of pounds. Some endings other than .co.uk also cost more every year.

If the name you want falls into that category, we will not quietly absorb it and we will not quietly refuse it either. We will tell you the actual price and give you a straight choice:

Pick a sensible standard alternative that we cover in full, which is what nearly everyone does; or
Pay the difference yourself, if you really want that specific name. We will tell you the exact figure before anything is bought, and we will never charge you for it without your say-so.

If you pay the difference for a premium name, you still own it on exactly the same terms as any other domain, and the transfer rules below still apply in full.

Section 3When we buy it

We buy your domain after your first payment goes through, not while you are still deciding. This is deliberate. It means you are never in a position where we have spent money in your name for something you did not agree to.

Before we buy, we check the name is available. If someone has taken the name you wanted between the call and the payment, we will come back to you with alternatives rather than registering something you did not choose.

Section 4If you cancel, you take your domain with you

This is the promise our team makes on every call, so here it is in writing, in full.

We will not hold your domain hostage. We do not charge a release fee, an exit fee, an administration fee, or any other fee for handing your domain over. We do not make you stay another month to get it. We do not require you to explain why you are leaving. We do not make you ask twice.

How to ask for it

Email hello@deftly.uk and say you are cancelling and you want your domain. That is the whole process. If you would rather move it to a specific company such as your new web designer or a registrar of your own choosing, tell us who, and we will send it there instead.

What we do, and how quickly

Within 5 working days of you asking, we will do whichever of these applies to your domain:

For a .co.uk or other .uk domain, we change the managing agent recorded with Nominet, the UK domain registry, to you or to whoever you have told us to send it to. That is how transferring a .uk domain works. There is no code to type; the change is made at the registry and your name stays on it throughout.
For any other ending, such as .com, we unlock the domain and send you the transfer code, which is the password your new provider needs to pull the domain across to them.

We will also confirm to you in writing, in the same email, the exact renewal date of your domain and which registrar it currently sits with, so you know when your first payment is due and where.

If something goes wrong at the registry or the registrar and it takes longer than 5 working days, we will tell you what is happening and keep you updated until it is done. We will not go quiet on you.

Renewals after you leave

Once the domain is in your hands, the renewal is yours to pay. It is usually somewhere around £10 to £15 a year, paid to whichever registrar you have moved it to, though the exact price is set by them and not by us.

Set a reminder. When you cancel, we switch off the automatic renewal on our account so you are never charged for something you did not ask for. That means nobody is paying it automatically any more. If you let the domain expire, you will lose the name, and someone else can register it. We will tell you the renewal date when we hand it over. Please put it in your diary.

If your renewal date happens to fall in the few days between you cancelling and the handover completing, tell us and we will renew it for you at our cost so it cannot lapse in the gap. Just flag it.

Section 5What happens to the website itself

We would rather be straight with you about this than let you find out afterwards.

Your domain goes with you. Your website does not. The site is built on our system and hosted by us. When your subscription ends, the site stops being published. If you point your domain somewhere new, there will be nothing of ours there, and if you do nothing, the domain simply will not show a website until you set one up elsewhere.

That is what your £29 a month pays for: the site being built, hosted, maintained and kept online. When the payments stop, that stops.

Getting a copy of your content

We do not have a download button. There is no one-click export that hands you a copy of your website. We are telling you that plainly rather than implying one exists.

What we will do, if you ask us by email before or within 30 days after your subscription ends: send you the text from your website and the photographs you supplied, in ordinary files you can open and give to whoever builds your next site. We will do that within 30 days of you asking, and we will not charge you for it.

Two honest limits on that. First, it is your words and your pictures, not a working copy of the website: the design, the layout and the software behind it stay ours, as set out in section 8 of the terms. Second, if you ask us long after you have left, we may already have deleted it. Ask early.

We keep your website content for [[HARRY: how long do we keep a cancelled customer's site content before deleting it for good? 90 days is a sensible answer. Nothing in the system enforces this automatically today, so pick a number you can actually keep to by hand, and then say the same number in the privacy notice.]] after your subscription ends, in case you change your mind and come back, and then we delete it.

Section 6What we are and are not responsible for

While you are with us, we will keep your domain renewed and pointed at your site. If we fail to renew it through our own mistake and you lose the name, we will do everything we reasonably can to get it back and we will pay the cost of doing so.

We are not responsible for a domain lost after it has been transferred to you and you have not renewed it, for a name being unavailable because somebody else registered it first, or for a domain being suspended or cancelled by the registry because the owner details you gave us were wrong. Domain registries can and do suspend .uk domains when the owner's details are not correct, so please keep them up to date with us.

Section 7Your details on the domain record

To register a domain in your name, we have to give the registrar and the registry your name, address, email address and phone number. That is a requirement of the domain system, not a choice we make. How we handle those details, who receives them and how long they are kept is set out in the privacy notice.

Nominet, which runs .uk domains, offers an opt-out that keeps a private individual's address off the public WHOIS record. It is available to people who are not trading, so most tradespeople running a business will not qualify. If you want us to try to apply it, ask and we will see whether you are eligible.

Section 8Any doubts

If any part of this worries you, email hello@deftly.uk before you sign up and ask us to put the answer in writing. We would much rather answer it now than have you wondering later.