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When registering a domain name contact information should be given about the owner (address, city, country, phone number etc.)

If I register a domain using my personal information and then after sometime I create a company, what's the procedure to assign the domain to this newly incorporated company?

I'm asking because I plan to register a domain as an individual for a period of several years, but if I proceed with incorporation of a company I wonder if this means that the domain should be registered to the company from the start, so in that case I should initially register it for just 1 year before transferring ownership to the legal entity.

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  • I guess changing contacts' info should be sufficient, but I try to clarify if this is an acceptable procedure.
    – Costas
    Commented Apr 5, 2020 at 16:04

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Your question depends on the TLD. If it is a gTLD, ICANN rules kick in, see the section "Inter-Registrant Transfer (Change of Registrant)" on https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/transfer-policy-2016-06-01-en

Of course, it also depends on your registrar, or if you do a registrar transfer at the same time.

So in all cases your (knowledgeable) registrar should be able to answer you if you ask it how are registrant changes handled on their side.

More on a meta level, note that there are numerous "horror" stories on domains being registered to individuals where they should be to companies or the opposite, depending on the relationship between the given individual and the company, and the difference when things are working out between them or not. I see in your case you specify you will create the company, so maybe the domain name you registered in your name could be among the "capital" (assets) of the company you create, but this depends very much on your jurisdiction, type of company, etc. What I am trying to say maybe is that it could be simple to just wait for the company to exist and then register the domain name.

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  • > What I am trying to say maybe is that it could be simple to just wait for the company to exist and then register the domain name. I'm firstly thinking of operating the website for a short period of time, without forming a company and of course without any monetary benefits, and if a minimum success is met then forming a company in order to move on with monetization. Many registrars allow change of contacts info and also allow the existence of many different types of contacts, so maybe the solution is as simple as that.
    – Costas
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 18:20
  • ...continuing my first comment. Otherwise if I form a company and I have to make a transfer, I will consider that as a small loss.
    – Costas
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 18:21
  • Note that for some TLD you have eligibility requirements, that may depend on the registrant being an individual or a company. Hence you may be able to register as an individual but then not be able to transfer it to a company. Again, you need to say the TLD :-) See new EU rules for example: eurid.eu/en/register-a-eu-domain/brexit-notice note the differences between (i)+(ii) and (iii) + (iv)
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 18:39
  • About "also allow the existence of many different types of contacts": the difference does not exist in the EPP model (where each contact has a mandatory name, and an optional organization) but indeed many registries force things to specify if a contact is an organization or an individual (because eligibility rules can depend on that, see previous comment) and some registrars may also ask for that difference, for example for accounting reasons.
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 18:42
  • I'm talking about a .org domain. When I say many types of contacts I mean: registrant, administrator, technical, billing contacts. All these can be different people in each category, I'm not only talking about differentiating between individuals or organizations. I mean that a couple of different people can be associated with the same domain, as in the example I gave here: namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/305/46/…
    – Costas
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 21:27

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