Registrar

A registrar is the customer-facing company where domains are bought, renewed, transferred, and managed. Examples include GoDaddy, Namecheap, Porkbun, Cloudflare Registrar, and Gandi. For every gTLD, the registrar must be accredited by ICANN and have a contract with the corresponding registry. Behind the scenes, the registrar talks EPP to the registry to provision the domain, then exposes a dashboard or API so the customer can edit DNS, nameservers, contacts, and the transfer auth code. Registrar choice affects price, transfer-out friction, WHOIS privacy defaults, and TLD availability.