How to Transfer a Domain Name to a New Host

Bluehost wins out as the number one hosting provider in our research. Its combination of strong uptime, customer service, and value for money make it the top choice. When you transfer a domain name to Bluehost, you’ll need to pay a transfer fee of $12.99.

Bluehost’s plans start at $2.95/month, and all of its shared plans offer unmetered bandwidth and free SSL. Bluehost’s most basic shared plan offers 50GB of storage, while the rest of its shared plans offer unlimited SSD storage.

There’s a lot to love about Bluehost, but if you do decide to sign up with this provider, remember to keep your eyes peeled for additional costs at checkout – optional items will come pre-selected, so it’s up to you to save on what you don’t want!

Bluehost is also an officially recommended provider by WordPress, so it’s definitely an upgrade if you’re transferring a WordPress website – and it’s also pretty easy to install WordPress on Bluehost.

HostGator earns the second spot in our overall hosting rankings, largely due to its excellent 99.99% uptime guarantee and wide array of features for shared plans. All domains transferred to HostGator get renewed free for one year, with no initial domain transfer fee.

HostGator’s shared plans start at $2.75/month, and include unlimited disk space. SSL security is included on some plans, but not all – you’ll have to add it to the more basic shared plans at an extra cost.

HostGator’s 24/7 customer support also impressed us when we tested it out. The knowledge base in particular was a treasure trove of information – in fact, HostGator’s searchable knowledge base exceeded our expectations by 18%.

InMotion’s features give it a major leg up against the competition: it offers unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and free SSL on even its most basic plan. It costs $11.99 to transfer a domain to InMotion.

While unlimited bandwidth is a pretty common hosting feature, unlimited disk space on basic plans makes InMotion stand out. InMotion’s cheapest plan starts at $2.29/month, and every plan comes with a 90-day money back guarantee so that you can try it out risk-free.

However, InMotion’s support didn’t impress us very much when we tested it out ourselves. Responses were quick, but a little too sales-y rather than purely informational. That said, InMotion provides 24/7 customer support from a staff with over 160 hours of specialist training, so you will be getting quality hosting advice.

Transfer fee: $12.99 plus annual renewal costs

You can transfer the following domain name extensions to Bluehost: com, net, org, us, co, info, and biz.

Once you’ve disabled privacy and unlocked your domain (steps two and three in this guide), you’ll need to get your authorization code (step four), which you might see labelled as an “EPP code” in Bluehost’s instructions – these names are interchangeable!

You can then initiate the transfer from your Bluehost control panel. Once you’ve entered your EPP code, you’ll get an Admin Verification code sent to the admin email address of the domain.

After this two-step verification process, you can set your renewal preferences and select any additional features, such as domain privacy (again, recommended!).

Transfer fee: Free for one year, then annual renewal costs

When you’ve completed steps one to four and are ready to initiate your transfer, you can navigate to HostGator’s domain transfer page. From there, you can enter your domain and HostGator will run through the pre-transfer checklist to make sure you’ve completed all the necessary steps. If there are any issues, you’ll be notified by a pop-up window before you can actually proceed with the transfer.

You’ll then need to verify the transfer over email. You’ll have to enter your authorization code into a verification email, and the transfer process will continue automatically.

Transfer fee: $11.99 plus annual renewal costs

InMotion can support the following domain name extensions: com, net, org, biz, info, and us.

Once you’ve completed steps one to four of this guide, you’ll be ready to initiate your transfer with InMotion on the Account Management Panel (AMP), which is InMotion’s control panel platform. You can hover over the “Domains” menu, where you’ll find a link called “Domain Transfers.” From there, type in the domain you want to transfer and click “Submit.”

You’ll then enter your authorization code and be taken to the “Billing Information” screen, where you’ll be charged InMotion’s $11.99 domain transfer fee.

You’ll receive a confirmation email in 5-10 minutes, and you can click the email link to accept your transfer.