[clug-talk] .ca domain registration pricing

[William Astle]

clug at matthew.mulrooney.ca wrote:
> 
> At such low margins, what happens when your registrar goes belly up?
> [I'm actually curious about the mechanics of that...]
> 
> I go with zid.com.  They charge me $23/year, and they have supplemental
> business, so I'm fairly confident that they will be in business for a
> long time...
> 
> But even then, their web interface is sometimes lacking (ex. last I
> checked, they don't provide me with way to specify more than two name
> servers... I have to request that by email :(.

For .ca registrars, the entire registration record is held by CIRA. The
registrant does not need any cooperation from the existing registrar to
transfer the domain to another registrar as long as they have kept their
login information for the CIRA site.

When a CIRA certified registrar goes under or otherwise ceases to be a
certified registrar, all registrants using that registrar are notified
by CIRA at which point they are required to transfer their domains
through the usual mechanism for such transfers. During this process,
however, the domain registration remains in full force because the
registrar has no involvement in providing the actual DNS service - the
registry provides that.

The only case where the domain would cease to function when a registrar
goes under would be if you were using that registrar for services other
than the domain registration itself. (DNS hosting is NOT part of a
domain registration, by the way. It's a separate service most registrars
provide to registrants that use them.)