Customer Portal - Domains
Critical Note: As of December 1, 2016, all ICANN accredited registrars are required to send a Change of Registrant email to protect your domain from theft when certain changes are made to your domain, regardless of whether or not the domain is changing ownership. Because of this, additional confirmation will be required when making any of the changes to your HostGator domain:
- When changing the first, last, or company name in your WHOIS information
- When changing your Registrant email address
- When disabling domain privacy
When making any of the above changes, you will be offered the opportunity to lock your domain to prevent transfer for 60 days following the change. This will need to be done prior to saving your changes. If you are updating your information to transfer your domain, No must be selected.
ICANN requires that the Change of Registrant email be sent to both the old Registrant email address and the new Registrant email address (if you did not change your Registrant email address, these would be the same address). To complete any changes to your domain, you must confirm BOTH Change of Registrant emails, even if they are the same email address.
Once you have confirmed BOTH Change of Registrant emails, please allow 24 hours for the change to your domain's WHOIS information to complete.
If you no longer have access to your previous Registrant email address to confirm the change to your domain, please contact us via phone or chat for assistance.
How to manage your domains
At HostGator, you should be able to directly manage your domains from LaunchPad and eNom via the Domains section in your Customer Portal. This section provides you the ability to do the following actions on your domain.
- View your domains ⤵
- Edit your contact information ⤵
- Manage domain privacy ⤵
- Manage domain locking ⤵
- Update name servers ⤵
- Register private name servers ⤵
- Renew your domain ⤵
View your domains
To view your domains within the Customer Portal:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Click Domains from the left-side menu.
- This will display the Manage Domains section, where you'll see the domains you've registered and transferred to HostGator and their status.
If you cannot find your domain in your Customer Portal, it may be a HostGator/eNom domain requiring management via the Registry Rocket portal. To know if your domain's registrar is eNom, please visit the article Is My Domain Registered with LaunchPad or eNom?
- Click More on the far right to view the Domain Overview.
In the Domain Overview section, you will see the following details.
- Contact support link
- Menu icons (on the left sidebar)
- Domain status
- Domain verification status
- Domain privacy status
- Domain lock status
- Registration date
- Expiration date
- Auto-renew status
- Name servers
- Contact information
- You can click on the Change link to update your domain information.
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You can also hover your mouse over the icons on the left sidebar to see a list of options for your domain.
Edit domain contact information
Your contact information is used to verify ownership of your domain, so it is important to ensure it is up to date and accurate. More information about WHOIS and the importance of keeping your contact information up-to-date can be found in the article Updating WHOIS Information.
To update your domain's contact information:
- Within the Manage Domains section, click the Change link under Contact Info. You can also hover over the icons in the left sidebar and click the Contact Info icon.
- In the Contact Info section, click the tabs to edit your Registrant, Administrative, Technical, or Billing details. You may also put a checkmark on Use for all contacts to have your contact details applied to all.
- Once done, make sure to double-check your details for accuracy! Click on the Save Contact Info button.
- A warning pop-up will appear. Click Save Contact Info to confirm the changes.
Manage domain privacy
While it is important to keep your WHOIS or domain registration details valid and up-to-date, you should also keep your contact information private from prying eyes. Domain privacy does that for you. For more information about domain privacy, please visit the article How to Enable Domain Privacy.
To manage your domain privacy:
- Within the Manage Domains section, look for the Privacy status, then click the Change link.
- Select Private to enable Domain Privacy or Public to disable it.
- Click the Save button. If you have not previously purchased Domain Privacy, you will be taken to checkout and prompted for payment.
Manage domain locking
If you wish to lock all your domains at once to ensure that they cannot be transferred without your consent, you may click the Lock Your Domains icon at the bottom right of the page. For more information, please check the article How To Unlock a Domain.
To manage your domain's lock status:
- Within the Manage Domains section, look for Locking and click its Change link.
- Toggle the lock button to Locking ON or Locking OFF.
- Click on Save Domain Locking.
Update name servers
For your website and emails to work, you need to connect your domain to your hosting account. To do that, you need to update your domain's name servers within your Customer Portal. Here is an article to help you manage your name servers How Do I Change My DNS or Name Servers?
To update the name servers within your Customer Portal:
- Within the Manage Domains section, click the Change link under Name Servers.
- From here, you may either automatically point your domain to your hosting package or manually type in your name servers.
To automatically point your domain to an existing hosting package:
- Select Automatically point my domain to my hosting account.
- Select the package you wish to point your domain to from the dropdown box.
- Click the Save Name Servers button.
To manually point your domain to specific name servers:- Select Manually set my name servers.
- Enter your name servers. Click the + icon if you need to add more name servers.
- Click the Save Name Servers button.
Register private name servers
If you're on Reseller, VPS, or dedicated hosting, you can update your domain's private name servers within the Customer Portal. To guide you in setting up your private name servers, please check the article Setting Up Private Name Servers.
To register the private name servers for your domain:
- Within the Manage Domains section, hover over the icons on the left sidebar and click the Private Name Server icon.
- Enter the private name servers and their equivalent IP addresses in the text boxes. Your private name server details are provided in your HostGator Welcome email.
- Click the Save Private Name Servers button.
To delete private name servers that you no longer need:
- Click the - icon next to any private name servers you want to delete.
- Click the Save Private Name Servers button.
Renew your domain
There are two ways to renew your domain within the Customer Portal. You may either auto-renew ⤵ your domain or manually renew ⤵ it.
Want to Cancel Your Domain?
If you no longer want to keep your domain, you will need to disable your domain's auto-renewal feature. For more information, please check the article How to cancel my domain name.
Auto-Renew
For your convenience, your domain is set to auto-renew by default to prevent it from expiring accidentally. To learn more, you may visit the article, How do I renew my domain name?
To manage auto-renew:
- Within the Manage Domains section, hover your mouse over the icons on the left sidebar and click Auto-Renew.
- Use the toggle to select your preferred auto-renewal setting.
- Click the Save Auto-Renew button.
Manual Renewal
If you have disabled Auto-Renew, you will need to manually renew your domain to prevent it from expiring.
- Great news! You may now renew (or extend) your domain manually to its full term.
- Please keep in mind that the renewal of Domain Privacy is separate from the renewal of your domain name. For more information, please check the article How to enable domain privacy.
To manually renew your domain:
- Within the Manage Domains section, hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then click Auto-Renew.
- Under Renew Domain, select the number of years you wish to renew the domain from the Select Renewal Term dropdown.
- Click the Renew button.
Not seeing the full term amount of years listed when renewing your domain? ICANN has certain limits on the number of years a domain TLD can be registered. If you are trying to renew a domain the same day you purchased it, the system will show one year less than the full term. If you go to renew the domain the day after, you should see the full amount of years available.
- An invoice will be generated in your Customer Portal's Billing section. Please settle the invoice to complete the renewal process.
Related Articles
We have compiled our most popular domain-related articles into different series.
- Domain Overview - Here is our consolidated guide of domain-related articles.
- Domain How-To's - You may visit our go-to articles for domain management.
- Domain Concepts - Learn more about domains and what you can do with them!
- Domain Troubleshooting - This is an ultimate guide to troubleshooting common domain-related website issues.