Domain Tool

This page can be used to lookup .COM .NET .ORG .EDU .INFO and .BIZ domains. If you have a 2 letter country domain, please check with the appropriate registrar for information: Country TLDs.

Domain Owner Tips

If you are the owner of a domain, its very important that you keep the domain record up-to-date. Some tips:

IMPORTANT: Make sure the email address of the administrative contact is current.
The registrar will only permit changes to be made to the domain record by the administrative contact. Often they will email authorization requests to that address. Also renewal notices will go to that address. If you don't renew your domain because you didn't know it was about to expire you may end up with a non-functioning web site. Worse yet, someone else can grab your domain after it expires!
Make sure the email address of the billing contact is current.
Some registrars will email renewal notices to the billing contact.
Make sure the postal address of the administrative and billing contact are current.
Some registrars will postal mail invoices and renewals to that address.
Make sure the Registrant information is up-to-date.
The "registrant" is the legal owner of the domain. Under extreme circumstances if the administrative contact cannot respond, its possible to get domain record changes made via fax on company letterhead. The address on the letterhead must match exactly the "registrant" in the domain record. Also in some legal disputes the registrant will be considered the owner of the domain
Check the expiration date of the domain
Make sure your domain registration doesn't expire. An expired domain is a non-functioning domain - this means your web address will not work, and any emails sent to that address will not work. Furthermore, expired domains eventually will become available for other parties to register.
It would be a good idea to renew your domain registration at least 2 months before expiration. 2 months will give you enough time to handle unforeseen problems, including updating your domain record for any address or email changes. If you wait till the last minute to renew you risk down-time on your site.
Renewals can usually be done on the web site for the registrar. When you check your domain name, the first screen will display the referral url, example:
```
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
```
that is the web site you can normally go to for renewal. Please read some of the information below for other renewal options and special cases.

Renewal Information

Here are some information about domain renewals. At one time there was only one registrar - Internic / Network Solutions. Recently the domain registration system was opened up for competition and now there are dozens of competing registrars. You can determine which registrar you are using by looking at the "Registrar" on the first page.

Network Solutions
If your domain was registered a long time ago (in the internic days), you:

Had to have an initial 2 year registration
Did not have to pay the registration fee in advance
May have paid $100 or $70 for 2 years, with renewals at $35/year
may receive postal renewal invoices

If those conditions apply to you, you have 3 choices for renewal.

Wait for a postal invoice, and mail in a check.
You are counting on NSI sending an invoice to the billing contact on record, that the billing contacts' postal address is up to date, and the mail doesn't get lost. It may be appropriate for some businesses, but we recommend the web payment method below as a sure thing.
Paying your renewal fee online
Go to http://www.networksolutions.com, click on the "Make Payments" link. Click on renewals and type in your domain name and credit card info. Renewal is $35 per year.
Transfer / Renew
We can transfer the domain into BigBiz's OpenSRS system. This will automatically add 1 year to your domain registration. The cost is $10, so effectively you are renewing your domain for $10. Read the next section for details.

Network Solutions
If you registered more recently with Network Solutions, sometimes also may be called WorldNIC, you may not get a postal invoice mailed. See the above instructions for making a renewal payment on the web, or for doing a transfer/renewal.

Tucows, Inc.
Your domain was registered through an OpenSRS reseller. BigBiz is an OpenSRS reseller, and its very likely your domain was registered through us. Contact your reseller to renew the domain.

BigBiz will renew domains registered through us for $10 per year (up to 10 years). Email support@bigbiz.com your domain name and the number of years you want to renew. You must have a current hosting account with us, we will add the renewal fees to your account. If you are not a current customer we may ask you to pre-pay the renewal fees using our on-line payment system.

If your domain was registered through another OpenSRS reseller you can either

Contact the other reseller for renewal, we don't know what they will charge, its probably more than $10
We can do a transfer/renew on the domain - this costs $10, see the next section for details.

All other registrars
If your domain is registered with any other registrar, please check their web site for renewal information. Usually there will be an online payment and renewal system. You can also do the Transfer / Renew method described below.

Transfer / Renew

If you want to take advantage of BigBiz's low priced domain registration and renewals on an existing domain which is registered elsewhere we can do a "Transfer / Renew".

Basically we would transfer your domain registration into our system. The operation is seamless and there should be no down-time of your domain. A transfer will automatically add 1 year to your domain registration, so in effect it is like a 1 year renewal. The cost is $10.

The only thing you need to make sure of is that the administrative contacts' email address (shown on page 2 of the above domain viewer) is current. OpenSRS/Tucows will email a web address and a password to the current admin contact, who needs to go there and type in the password to activate the transfer. If the email address is not current we will not be able to do a transfer. If this is the case you will first need to update your domain record so the admin email is current, then contact us for the transfer. See your registrars web site for details on updating your domain record.

If the domain record's information is all current, just email support@bigbiz.com for a transfer - we will preserve all the current info. If you like to make some changes with the transfer, we can include that too (example: postal address, phone numbers, email addresses, names, etc...). But it is important that the CURRENT administrative contact's email address is up-to-date.

Discounted Domain Registrations

BigBiz can additionally register new domain names for you in .com, .net, and .org for $10 (1 year); .biz and .info domains for $20 (2 years). Please check our web site for details.