Transferring domain registrations from Gandi to Porkbun

Claire Furney

• 2 min read
Transferring domain registrations from Gandi to Porkbun
Photo by Brittani Burns / Unsplash

I've been happily using gandi.net for several years to register and manage the handful of domains I own. Gandi are based in France and I've always found them reliable with a straightforward admin interface and fairly competitive. However, they charge in Euros and although I don't think the exchange rate has changed that much, there are much better deals for GBP out there at the moment.

Pricing

I wanted to repurchase a .xyz domain, which I used to own, but let lapse. On gandi it was priced at €17.34 (or £14.90) a year. I had a .org and a .com domain which were both up for renewal and also priced about the same.

Alternative registrars I considered were porkbun.com, hover.com and cloudflare. Cloudflare charges cost, but recommended having at least 15 days left before expiry. Porkbun was cheaper than hover for the .com ($9.13) and the .org ($10.72) AND had a special deal for the first year of the new (old) .xyz (0.98¢).

Transfer process

The actual transfer of the two domains was super easy and took about 10 minutes each. These are only hobby sites so I wasn't too worried about downtime, but the nameservers were still pointing back at the old registrar after the transfer, so I guess as long as you set up any required DNS records at the new registrar following the transfer and then update the nameservers to point to the new registrar, there shouldn't be any outage.

  1. In gandi, check no DNSSEC in place (there wasn't) and check main admin email for the domain is up to date (it was)
  2. Turn off transfer lock and make a note of the transfer authorisation code
transfer authorization code
  1. In porkbun under transfer double check all the tips and then enter the domain name and the transfer code
transfer to porkbun
  1. Status of transfer progress on porkbun should update to submitted to current registrar after a few minutes
  2. Shortly afterwards I received an email from gandi at the admin email address to "verify" and therefore expedite the transfer (otherwise the deal is it will go through automatically after 5 days). Completed the verification.
  3. Voila! Domain transferred
  4. Check DNS and add missing records (no DNS records had been copied over automatically)
  5. Update nameservers to point to porkbun