: Bought domain for , a year after asked for to renew I bought my domain name 1 year ago from Godaddy for as cheap as . A year after I received a reminder email from them asking

@Connie744

So it was WhoisGuard fees for . This gives you anonymity for "whois" so no one can see your registration information online. You don't have to accept that. What will happen is, when someone does a "whois yourwebsite.com", it will show GoDaddy contact information instead of your personal or company information.

If you didn't ask for whoisGuard or SSL, and GoDaddy tacked that on automatically, I will add that to my list of 9634 reasons I won't use GoDaddy for anything.

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@Ogunnowo487

It's quite typical of GoDaddy to have a low introductory offer for the first year. But the "renewal" costs are hard to find. This is, unfortunately, quite common practise, but not necessarily "standard". It relies on the fact that most users probably don't change the registrar. But this domain might have been heavily discounted in the first year. Personally, I avoid registrars/hosts that are not upfront with their costs and prefer registrars have the same registration/renewal costs.


if so, is there anyway I can change my registrar while keeping the same domain name for cheaper rates?


Yes, you can change registrar at "any time". Providing you're not too close to renewal and they've already taken payment! It can also take several days to transfer the domain - but that doesn't necessarily mean any down time.

There might also be restrictions on transferring a domain too soon after registration. eg. in the first 3 months.

Also, some registrars might charge an additional "admin" fee for transferring away. Need to check their T&Cs. Again, I would avoid any registrar that imposes additional fees like this, most do not. (I don't think GoDaddy does.)



And, as mentioned in comments, be wary of any scam emails (that have plucked your details from the WhoIs database) trying to get you to "renew" with them, rather than your real registrar.

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