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 allow you 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 to 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 a change to your domain, please contact us via phone or Live Chat for assistance.
How to access my domains
At HostGator, you should be able to directly manage your domains from LaunchPad and eNom via the Domains section in your Customer Portal.
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Click the Domains tab from the left-side menu.
- Under Manage Domain, you will see a complete list of 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 the More link to view the Domain Overview section.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left-hand side to see a list of other options for your domain.
This menu provides you the ability to do the following actions on your domain.
For more information about domain management, please visit the article Domain How-To's.
Editing your contact information
Your contact information can be used to verify ownership of your domain, so it is very important that you 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 - LaunchPad.
To update your domain's contact information:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then click Contact Info.
- In the Contact Info section, select the tabs to edit the details for your Registrant, Administrative, Technical, or Billing. You may also click Use for all contacts to have your details applied to all.
- Once done with the updates, click the Save Contact Info button.
Managing Domain Privacy
For more information about Domain Privacy, please visit the article How to Enable Domain Privacy.
To manage your Domain Privacy:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then click Domain Privacy.
- Select preferred settings - Public or Private.
- Click the Save button. If you have not previously purchased Domain Privacy, you will be taken to checkout and prompted for payment.
Managing domain locking
If you wish to lock all of 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 of the page. For more information, please check out the article How To Unlock a Domain.
To manage your domain locking for a single domain:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then click Domain Locking.
- Select preferred setting by sliding the toggle - Locking ON and Locking OFF.
- Click the Save Domain Locking button.
If your domain locking is unlocked, you can click Request Your EPP Key to see your domain's EPP code, which is used for domain transfer.
Updating name servers
Here is an article to help you in managing your name servers How Do I Change My DNS or Name Servers?
To update your name servers:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then click Name Servers.
- From here, you may either enter specific name servers or automatically point your domain to one of your hosting packages:
- 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 name servers.
- Click the Save Name Servers button.
Registering private name servers
To guide you in registering your private name servers, please check out the article Private Name Servers - Setup.
To register new private name servers for your domain:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then click Private Name Servers.
- Enter the private name servers in the text boxes and their equivalent IP addresses.
- 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 wish to delete.
- Click the Save Private Name Servers button.
Renewing Your Domain
There are two ways to renew your domain within the Customer Portal. You may either choose to auto-renew your domain or manually renew it.
Want to Cancel Your Domain?
If you find that you no longer want to keep your domain, you will need to disable your domain's auto-renewal feature. For more information, please check out the article How to cancel my domain name.
Auto-Renew
For your convenience, your domain is set to auto-renew by default in order 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:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- Hover your mouse over the icons on the left, then 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 out the article How to enable Domain Privacy.
To manually renew your domain:
- Log in to your Customer Portal.
- 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.
Additional Information
- Domain Overview - Here is our consolidated guide of domain-related articles.
- Domain Concepts - Learn more about domains and what you can do with them!
- Domain How-To's - You may visit our go-to articles when it comes to managing your domains.
- Domain Troubleshooting - This is an ultimate guide in troubleshooting common domain-related website issues.