How to Move Your Domain from Godaddy to Namecheap for "Move Your Domain Day"

Today, Namecheap is running a sale for $4 domain transfers for "Move Your Domain Day". I’ve used Namecheap for about a decade now and think they're a great registrar. I even recommend their shared hosting for clients that just need simple hosting that works. To honor this wonderful day, I've decided to put together this guide to help people get their domains out of Godaddy into an honest registrar.

Free Your Domain from Godaddy

1. Go to Manage my Domains.
2. See that green check mark under the Lock column? Click it and set it to off.
3. Click the domain name to go to the domain details page.
4. Scroll down to the section titled Domain Transfer and click on “Transfer Out”.
   • Note: this link personally didn’t do anything when I clicked it, so I had to right click it and hit “Open in New Tab”
5. The next page will have a checklist, but you’ve already done the necessary steps.
6. Select “Other please specify” from the list of Registrars in step 6, type “Namecheap”, and type a reason for transferring if you want (for instance, they supported SOPA).

That’s it! The administrator email attached to the the domain will get an authorization number emailed to it in a few minutes. After that, you need to get your domain into Namecheap.

Transfer the Domain Into Namecheap

1. Go to the Transfer a Domain page on Namecheap and type in your domain.
2. Add the domain to your cart and check out.
3. Load the Namecheap dashboard for domains.
4. You should see your domain listed here. On the right side of its row, instead of Manage it will say Authorize.
5. Enter the code that Godaddy emailed you.

After this you’ll get another email at your administrative contact asking you to verify the transfer. You are all set now!

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Please let me know on Twitter if you have any questions at all about this process! As of this writing (2 PM EST) they are pledging $1.50 of the $4.00 transfer fee to the EFF, currently tallying over $30,000!

If you found this article helpful enough to use Namecheap to buy a domain, you should first check out their coupons page to find a great deal, and then use my affiliate link when signing up!