![GoDaddy's own domain-transfer graphic from its India site, band-cropped - a domain changing hands, the subject of this agreement]()
The most expensive line in a domain purchase is often the one about time. We read GoDaddy's change-of-registrant agreement on 21 October 2026. Taking ownership of a domain there locks it to GoDaddy for sixty days, and if the name changes hands again inside that window the clock starts over. The new owner has ten days to confirm or nothing happens at all. And on the question of whether the person selling you the domain actually owned it, GoDaddy's position is that it is a processor — the risk is yours.
GoDaddy Domain Name Change of Registrant Agreement, read 21 October 2026
godaddy.com/en-in/legal/agreements/change-of-registrant-agreement - read logged out, from India, nothing purchased, no domain transferred
60-day registrar lock, restarts on resale · 10-day confirmation window · no warranty that the seller owned it
📅 Update log:
21 October 2026 — First publication. Source read the same day: godaddy.com/en-in/legal/agreements/change-of-registrant-agreement, rendered in a headless browser, logged out, from India, with nothing purchased, no domain bought or transferred and GoDaddy not contacted. Recorded from this read: the Transfer Prohibition Period of 60 days following completion of a change of registrant, during which the domain may not be transferred to another registrar; the restart of that period on any subsequent change of registrant within it; the requirement that both prior and new registrant acknowledge and explicitly consent, with GoDaddy emailing both at initiation and completion; the new registrant's 10-day window to log in and confirm; GoDaddy's statement that its sole role is as processor of the change; the new registrant's assumption of full responsibility for the prior registrant's actual registration, their legal right and ability to transfer, any pre-existing situation causing delay or failure, and the validity and enforceability of the new registrant's own entitlement once the transfer completes; the exclusion of GoDaddy's liability under any circumstance for suspension, loss or modification of the domain; the award of reasonable court costs and attorneys' fees to the prevailing party in a dispute; and the .US Nexus requirements, including the requirement that name servers be US-based and that unverifiable Nexus information makes the domain subject to immediate cancellation. The document gives no fee figures and none is asserted; it carries no last-revised date we could locate, so none is claimed. No wrongdoing by GoDaddy is alleged; the 60-day lock is an ICANN-level policy and the .US Nexus rules are set by that registry. Coverage checked first: blog 1977 covers the separate registrar-to-registrar transfer agreement and 2051 the dispute policy; neither covers this document.
The 60-day lock, and the clause that restarts it
If you take ownership of a domain at GoDaddy, you cannot move it to another registrar for sixty days. GoDaddy's change-of-registrant agreement calls this the Transfer Prohibition Period, and it runs from the moment the ownership change completes.
The clause people miss is the next one: if the domain changes registrant again inside that window, the sixty days start over. A name that has been bought and resold can therefore be pinned to GoDaddy for a good deal longer than two months from the day you acquired it.
This is an ICANN-level rule rather than a GoDaddy one — the agreement notes GoDaddy is an ICANN-accredited registrar and bound by its agreement with ICANN — so you will meet it wherever you buy. It is simply worth pricing into the purchase.
| The clock | How long | GoDaddy's own words |
|---|
| Transfer Prohibition Period | 60 days | After the change of registrant completes, the domain “may not be transferred to another domain name registrar” |
| If it changes hands again inside that window | The 60 days restart | The period “will begin again upon completion of the subsequent change of registrant transaction” |
| New registrant's window to confirm | 10 days | They “must log into its account and confirm the terms” within ten days of receiving the email |
| Consent required | Both parties, explicitly | Both “must acknowledge and explicitly consent to the change of registrant information” |
| Confirmation emails | At initiation and at completion | GoDaddy emails both the prior and the new registrant at each stage |
Who carries the risk on what you just bought
GoDaddy describes its “sole role” in a change of registrant as that of a processor. Everything about whether the seller owned the domain, had the right to sell it, and whether your ownership holds up afterwards is placed on the buyer.
| The risk | Who carries it | What the agreement says |
|---|
| That the seller actually registered the domain | The new registrant | “The Prior Registrant's actual registration of the domain name” |
| That the seller had the right to sell it | The new registrant | “The Prior Registrant's legal right and ability to transfer registration” |
| Anything pre-existing that delays or blocks the transfer | The new registrant | “Any and all situations existing prior to this Agreement or that may arise” causing delay or failure |
| That your ownership is actually enforceable afterwards | The new registrant | “The validity and/or enforceability of the New Registrant's entitlement to the registration ... when the transfer is consummated” |
| Suspension, loss or modification of the domain | Not GoDaddy | Neither party may hold GoDaddy liable “under any circumstance” for it |
| Costs if the two of you end up in dispute | The losing side | “the prevailing party shall be paid its reasonable court costs and attorneys' fees” |
| GoDaddy's own role | Processor only | Its “sole role in connection with this Agreement is as processor” of the change |
The broadest of those is the fourth one. The new registrant accepts responsibility for “the validity and/or enforceability” of their own entitlement to the domain once the transfer completes — which is to say GoDaddy is not warranting that what you received is actually, durably yours.
No wrongdoing is suggested by any of this. A registrar processing a change between two strangers is in no position to adjudicate who owns what, and every registrar disclaims it. The practical consequence is simply that the diligence is yours, and it is the reason buying through an escrow service or a marketplace is the normal advice for anything valuable.
The .US trap for Indian buyers
The agreement carries a separate set of certifications for .US domains, and most Indian buyers will not meet them. Getting this wrong does not produce a warning — the document says the domain becomes subject to immediate cancellation.
| Who or what | Status under the .US Nexus requirements | What the agreement says |
|---|
| A US citizen | Qualifies | Stated directly |
| A US permanent resident, or someone domiciled in the US or its territories | Qualifies | Stated directly |
| An entity incorporated in a US state, DC or a US territory | Qualifies | Stated directly |
| A foreign entity with no US presence | Does not qualify | Only a foreign entity with a “bona fide presence” in the US that “regularly engages in lawful activities” there qualifies |
| Name servers outside the US | Not permitted | “must be based within the United States of America or any of its possessions or territories” |
| If the Nexus information cannot be verified | Immediate cancellation | The domain “shall be subject to immediate cancellation” |
The name-server requirement catches people who would otherwise qualify. Even a buyer with a genuine US presence has to keep the domain's name servers inside the United States or its territories, which rules out plenty of ordinary hosting arrangements.
How this was read, and what we are not telling you
Source: godaddy.com/en-in/legal/agreements/change-of-registrant-agreement, read on 21 October 2026 in a headless browser, logged out, from India, with nothing purchased, no domain bought or transferred, and GoDaddy not contacted. Every quotation above is from that document and is reproduced as written.
This is a summary of a legal agreement, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for reading the document or for taking advice on a domain purchase that matters to you. We have not interpreted the dispute clause's reference to “reasonable court costs and attorneys' fees” beyond quoting it, and we express no view on how any of these clauses would be applied.
The document gives no fee figures for a change of registrant and we assert none. It also carries no last-revised date that we could locate, so none is claimed here. We did not run a change of registrant, so nothing here reports how the process behaves in practice — only what the agreement says you are agreeing to.
No wrongdoing by GoDaddy is alleged. The 60-day transfer lock is an ICANN-level policy that applies across accredited registrars; the .US Nexus requirements are set by that registry, not by GoDaddy; and a registrar acting as processor disclaiming warranties about title is ordinary industry practice. GoDaddy sets all of it out in its own published terms.
What to do with this before you buy
Three things, and none of them takes long. First, if the plan is to move the domain to a cheaper registrar, budget sixty days — and ask the seller whether the domain has changed hands recently, because a restarted clock is invisible from the outside.
Second, watch for the confirmation email and act inside ten days. The transaction lapses if the new registrant does not log in and confirm, and the email is easy to miss.
Third, do the diligence yourself, because the agreement makes clear nobody else is doing it. If the domain is worth real money, that means escrow or a marketplace rather than a private arrangement. Our page on GoDaddy's domain dispute policy covers what happens when a transfer is challenged after the fact.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a change of registrant, and how is it different from a domain transfer?
They are two different things and GoDaddy has a separate agreement for each. A change of registrant changes the owner — the domain stays at GoDaddy, but the registrant details move from one person or company to another. That is what this agreement governs.
A domain transfer moves the domain between registrars — from GoDaddy to another company, or the reverse — while the owner may stay the same; that is governed by the Domain Name Transfer Agreement, and we have written up
the twelve reasons GoDaddy gives for rejecting one separately.
The reason the distinction matters is that doing the first one blocks the second for two months, which is the single most practical thing in this document. If you buy a domain intending to move it elsewhere, you are buying a 60-day wait along with it.
How long is a domain locked after it changes hands?
Sixty days, and the clock can restart. The agreement states that the domain “may not be transferred to another domain name registrar within sixty (60) days after the completion of the change of registrant transaction” — GoDaddy calls this the Transfer Prohibition Period. And if the domain changes registrant again inside that window, the 60 days “will begin again” from the completion of the second change. That second clause is the one that bites on a domain that has been flipped: a name bought and resold twice in quick succession can sit locked to GoDaddy for well over two months from when you got it. This is not a GoDaddy invention — a 60-day lock after a registrant change is an ICANN-level policy that applies across registrars, and GoDaddy is an ICANN-accredited registrar bound by that agreement, as this document says. Plan around it rather than disputing it.
Does GoDaddy guarantee the person selling me a domain actually owns it?
No, and the agreement says so about as plainly as it could. GoDaddy states its “sole role in connection with this Agreement is as processor” of the change. The new registrant then “assumes full and complete responsibility” for a list that includes “the Prior Registrant's actual registration of the domain name”, “the Prior Registrant's legal right and ability to transfer registration”, anything pre-existing that delays or prevents the transfer, and — the broadest of them — “the validity and/or enforceability of the New Registrant's entitlement to the registration of the domain name when the transfer is consummated”. Read plainly: if the seller did not have the right to sell, that is your problem, not GoDaddy's. We are not suggesting this is improper — a registrar processing a change between two parties is in no position to adjudicate title, and every registrar disclaims this. It does mean the diligence is entirely on the buyer, which is the argument for buying through an escrow or a marketplace rather than privately.
What do both sides actually have to do for the change to complete?
Both parties have to consent explicitly, and the new owner has ten days to do it. The sequence in the agreement: the prior registrant initiates the request; GoDaddy sends a confirmation email to both parties; both “must acknowledge and explicitly consent” to the change; the new registrant “must log into its account and confirm the terms ... within ten (10) days” of receiving that email; and on completion GoDaddy emails both again to confirm. The ten-day window is a hard deadline worth diarising — a buyer who misses the email, or whose email lands in spam, lets the transaction lapse. The confirmation emails are also the buyer's paper trail, which matters given how much of the risk the agreement puts on them. Both parties also warrant that they have “the right, power, legal capacity and appropriate authority” to enter into it, which is the clause that bites if someone signs on behalf of a company without authority to.
Can someone in India take over a .US domain?
Usually not, and the consequence of getting it wrong is cancellation rather than a refund. The agreement sets out the .US Nexus requirements that the new registrant must certify they meet: a US citizen; a US permanent resident or someone whose primary domicile is in the US or its territories; an entity incorporated or organised in a US state, DC or a US possession; or a foreign entity with a “bona fide presence” in the United States that regularly engages in lawful commercial or non-commercial activity there. There is a second requirement people miss: the name servers for a .US domain “must be based within the United States” or its territories, which rules out a good deal of ordinary hosting. And if the Nexus information “cannot be verified”, or you stop meeting the requirements, the domain “shall be subject to immediate cancellation”. An Indian individual or an Indian company with no US operations will generally not qualify, and certifying otherwise is not a risk worth taking for a domain extension.
Prices & codes last verified: October 21, 2026
Zoutons earns affiliate commission on some links on this page. It costs you nothing and it does not decide what we write. Every clause and quotation above comes from GoDaddy's own published Domain Name Change of Registrant Agreement at godaddy.com/en-in/legal/agreements/change-of-registrant-agreement, read on 21 October 2026, logged out, from India, with nothing purchased, no domain bought or transferred and GoDaddy not contacted. THIS IS A SUMMARY OF A LEGAL AGREEMENT AND NOT LEGAL ADVICE. It is not a substitute for reading the agreement, and anyone buying a domain of real value should take their own advice; we express no view on how any clause here would be applied in a dispute. GoDaddy states no fee for a change of registrant in this document and we assert none, and the document carries no last-revised date that we could find. We did not run a change of registrant, so nothing here describes how the process behaves in practice. NO WRONGDOING BY GODADDY IS ALLEGED. The 60-day transfer lock is an ICANN-level policy applying across accredited registrars, the .US Nexus requirements are set by that registry rather than by GoDaddy, and a registrar acting as a processor disclaiming warranties about a seller's title is ordinary industry practice stated openly in its own terms. GoDaddy may change this agreement at any time, effective on posting, so what it publishes when you act prevails over anything here.
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