How to buy a domain through Magic Pages
Buy a domain in the portal at cost, registered in your name: the steps, the two boxes you tick, and what happens on your site afterwards.
Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki
You can buy a domain in the portal, at cost plus a €1.00 yearly service fee, and it's registered in your name. Registration usually finishes within a few minutes of paying.
You can also keep your domain with another company and connect it to your site.
Before you start
You need a paid plan. During a trial, the Domain tab asks you to upgrade first.
Have the owner's details ready: name, address, email and phone number. The domain is registered to whoever you enter, so use the person or organization it should belong to.
If you're billed in the UK, we can only sell domains to businesses. Without a UK VAT number, the checkout asks you to confirm the domain is for your business or publication, and to give its name.
Buying a domain, step by step
- In the portal, open the Domain tab. Under Registered with Magic Pages, click Get a new domain.
- Type the name you'd like into Find a domain. Each result says Available, Taken, Premium or Not available, with its price. Click What's in this price? to see what the price is made of, then Choose next to the one you want. If your first idea is taken, there are alternatives under How about one of these?
- Under Who should own this domain?, pick A person or An organization, fill in the details and click Save and continue.
- Check the summary. It shows the price for the first year and every year after, the VAT for your billing country, and that the domain renews automatically every year.
- Under Billed to, check the billing details. They're the owner's by default. If someone else pays, tick Use different billing details.
- Tick both boxes and click Continue to payment. You pay on the next screen, without leaving the portal.
After you've paid, the portal shows each stage as it happens: Payment received, Registering, Setting up DNS, Connecting to your site and Done. You can leave the page. Registration carries on without you. We email you an order confirmation as soon as the payment goes through, and again when the domain is ready.
The two boxes you tick
The first says you agree to the domain terms and the rules that come with the domain. The links under it go to our domain terms, the agreement of Openprovider (the registrar we work with), the registry's policy, and ICANN's pages on your rights as a domain owner.
The second is about your right of withdrawal. We register the domain straight after you pay, and a registration can't be undone, so we have to ask you to waive the 14-day withdrawal period. The box reads: "I expressly ask you to register the domain now, before the 14-day withdrawal period ends. I know that I lose my right of withdrawal once the domain is registered."
Until the domain is registered, you can still withdraw. Use the withdrawal form, or email help@magicpages.co.
WHOIS privacy
Where the extension lets you choose, WHOIS privacy is on, so your contact details stay out of the public register. You can turn it off later on the domain's page. Some registries decide for themselves: .de hides owner details by default, and .eu and .nl don't offer WHOIS privacy at all. The summary tells you which applies before you pay.
Which email address to use
Use an address on a different domain from the one you're buying. If the domain ever stopped working, our warnings about it would go to an inbox that no longer exists.
The registry may also ask you, as the new owner, to confirm your email address. When it does, a link arrives in your inbox, and the domain's page in the portal shows a notice that starts with "Confirm your email address by" and a date. If you don't click the link by then, the registry pauses the domain until you do. Resend email sends the link again, and Use a different address sends it somewhere else.
What happens on your site
If your site doesn't have a custom domain yet, we connect the new one to it as www.yourdomain.com, and yourdomain.com without the www forwards there. You don't set up any DNS records yourself.
If your site already runs on another domain, it keeps that one, and the portal asks what the new domain should do. Until you decide, it's parked on a simple holding page. To switch your site over, remove the old domain from your site first:
Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki
Then open the new domain under Registered with Magic Pages, click Move to another site, choose your site and click Move domain.
If something goes wrong
If the registrar turns the registration down, we refund your payment in full automatically and email you. It can take up to 10 business days to show on your statement. If the registrar is only having a temporary problem, we keep trying, and the portal shows the registration as still running.
If you leave the payment screen without paying, nothing is registered and nothing is charged.
It stays yours
You're the registered owner, not us. We bill the domain on its own, separately from your hosting plan, and if your site ever goes away, the domain stays registered and keeps renewing. You can move it to any other registrar whenever you like, and that's free.
Whenever its DNS records, its owner details, its nameservers or its transfer lock change, we email the owner a domain passport. It's a zip with a summary of the registration and a full copy of the DNS records, so you always hold what you'd need to move the domain without us.
Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki
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