Somewhere in every due diligence questionnaire is a line asking the seller to confirm ownership of its intellectual property, including domain names. It is rarely the question anyone worries about in advance. It is quite often the one that causes a delay.
Why it causes trouble
Because the honest answer is frequently “we are not certain”.
Domains accumulate over years. One was registered by a founder personally, before the company existed. Another sits in a web agency’s registrar account because they built the first site. A third was bought for a campaign in 2019 by someone who has since left. Each was fine in isolation. Collectively they form a portfolio nobody can fully account for.
The company’s main trading domain — the one its email runs on — is usually the one with the least clarity, precisely because it is the oldest.
What a buyer is actually testing
Not tidiness. They are testing whether the thing they are buying can continue operating the day after completion without depending on the goodwill of someone who is not party to the deal.
A domain registered to a former contractor is a live dependency on a third party. If that person cannot be reached, or is not inclined to help, the buyer has purchased a business whose email address belongs to someone else. Lawyers price that risk, and they do not price it generously.
The specific findings that cause problems
- Registrant is an individual. Even a current director. If the shares are being sold, the domain does not automatically move with them — it is personally held property.
- Registrant is a supplier. Common where an agency built the original site and never transferred the record.
- Nobody has account access. The domain may be correctly registered, but if no one at the company can log in, control is theoretical.
- Contact address is a former employee’s mailbox. Recovery and transfer both depend on receiving email at that address.
- The list is incomplete. Warranting ownership of “all domains used in the business” is uncomfortable when nobody can produce a definitive list.
Fix it while everyone is friendly
This is the entire point. Correcting a registrant record is routine, usually free, and takes minutes — while relations are good. A supplier who likes you will do it without fuss.
Under time pressure in a transaction, with a party who has worked out that they hold something you urgently need, it becomes a negotiation. The cost is not the registrar’s fee.
What clean looks like
- Every domain registered to the company’s registered name, exactly as filed at Companies House
- A single consolidated portfolio with one renewal calendar
- Contact address a role account the company controls, not on the domain itself
- Transfer locks and two-factor authentication applied
- A written list of every domain, registrar, expiry date and registrant
That last item is what a data room actually needs. Most businesses cannot produce it on request; the ones that can look markedly more organised than the ones that cannot, and that impression carries.
Worth doing before you need it
Our portfolio audit produces exactly that document — every domain, registrant, registrar, expiry date, DNS configuration and security status, with a prioritised list of what to correct. Written to be read by someone non-technical, because in a transaction it usually is.
There is no obligation to have us manage anything afterwards. Plenty of audits end with a business simply putting its own house in order.
Call 01202 835235 or email contact@domainwarden.co.uk.