Transferring a domain you already own

What it costs, what has to be true before it will work, and what keeps running while it does.

Moving a domain to us does not change your website or your mail — it changes who bills you for the name and where you manage it. Nothing goes offline during a transfer, as long as you leave the DNS alone.

The price, and a surprise in it

Transferring a .ge costs ₾30. Registering a new .ge costs ₾40 — so bringing an existing one here is cheaper, which is the opposite of what most people expect.

For .com, .net and .org a transfer costs ₾50, the same as a registration.

For .com, .net and .org the transfer adds a year to whatever time the domain has left. You are not paying for time you already own; you are extending it.

Three things that must be true first

The domain must be unlocked at your current registrar. Registrar lock is on by default almost everywhere — it exists to stop a domain being stolen, and it will refuse a legitimate transfer just as firmly.

You need the authorisation code, sometimes called the EPP code or transfer key. Your current registrar gives it to you; we cannot obtain it for you, and no transfer starts without it.

The address in the domain's admin contact must be one you can read today. The approval email goes there, and a transfer waiting on a mailbox that no longer exists is the most common way a transfer quietly expires.

The 60-day rule

A .com, .net or .org cannot be transferred within 60 days of being registered, or within 60 days of its last transfer. This is a registry rule, not ours, and there is no way around it.

If you have just bought the name somewhere else, note the date and come back after it. Everything else can be set up in the meantime — the domain does not have to be with us to point at our servers.

Nothing goes down while it moves

A transfer moves the registration, not the DNS. Your site keeps loading and your mail keeps arriving throughout, because the records stay exactly where they were.

If you also want to move the hosting or the mail, do that as a separate step — before or after, but not in the same hour. Two changes at once means a problem with either one looks like a problem with both.