Bluehost offers one free domain that let you save about $12 in the first year of your hosting. In the second year, Bluehost will send you email for domain renewal & you need to pay $15 to Bluehost for renewing the domain name.

Personally, I’m not in favor of hosting my domains on Bluehost as the price is high. Moreover, one should always host their domain & hosting at the separate registrar so that even if your hosting account is  hacked, you will have access to your domain. The latter one is hypothetical, but crucial when you face such situation.

• Also see: Which Bluehost Shared hosting plan is best for you

Anyways, on one of my Bluehost account, my first year is complete & Bluehost is asking me to renew the domain. The only problem is; I have to pay $15 for domain renewal, which is about $3-4 higher than the standard market rate. So instead of renewing my domain on Bluehost, I decided to migrate my domain from Bluehost to Godaddy.

When you migrate a domain away from Bluehost:

• You automatically renew your domain for one year.
• You just need to pay domain renewal fees.
• Domain transfer is free

In this tutorial, I will share the complete guide on transferring the domain away from Bluehost. You can use this for transferring the domain from Bluehost to Godaddy, NameCheap or any other domain registrar of your choice.

How to Transfer Domain Names: Complete Guide

The process of transferring the domain is easy, and you need to do few steps at Bluehost, and the rest of the steps at your new domain registrar.

• Login to your Bluehost account dashboard & click on Domains
• Select the domain name that you want to transfer away.
• Click on Lock & click on Unlock the domain

Now Click on transfer EPP code tab and copy the EPP code. (The EPP code is very important, as this will be use to authenticate your domain transfer on new registrar).

Note: I have blurred my EPP code above due to security concern. You should never share your domain EPP code with anyone.

With this, you are done with making all necessary changes on Bluehost for domain transfer. Now, you need to go to your new domain registrar and initiate the domain transfer. In this case, I’m using Godaddy, a popular domain registration service.

• Head over to Godaddy & click on domains > Transfer > Transfer your domains
• Add your domain name & EPP code

• Click on Transfer & create your account, make payment to start the transfer process.

As soon as your finish this step, you will get an email for transfer authorization. You need to click a link on that email to authenticate the transfer, and domain will automatically transferred from Bluehost to your new domain registrar.

Imp: You will also get an email from Bluehost regarding domain transfer. Read it carefully & don’t click on the link on that email. Else your domain transferred will be canceled.

Things to note:

• When your domain is transferred from one registrar to another, nothing will be changed. Your domain DNS and Name-server record will stay the same.
• Once domain transfer is done, you should check who.is record of your domain name & update it accordingly.

Transferring domain from one registrar is an easy process, and once you have done it, you will have no problem for future transfers.