Client Domains
Whois — What Anyone Can Read About a Client's Domain
Before you quote for an account you have never touched, the public record will tell you who really holds it and how long you have got.
Straight answer first
WHOIS is the public lookup carrying a domain's registrar, dates and status, and for a reseller it is the first place to check what you are actually taking on before you agree a migration date.
Most personal details are redacted now, but the useful parts survive. Below: what is still visible and who reads it, whose name shows when a record is not masked, how to run WHOIS as due diligence, and why the underlying record still settles disputes.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 24 August 2026
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Terms left to guesswork
100+
Definitions, cross-linked
Real
Kit you actually resell
Free
To read and to forward
The lookup once published registrant names, addresses and email addresses wholesale, which made it a spammer's shopping list. Redaction under GDPR and the spread of privacy services now hide most personal detail by default across much of the namespace.
The dates are what keep it useful in day-to-day reseller work. Creation, expiry, registrar of record and lock status are public facts, and between them they tell you whether a promised transfer date is realistic before you promise it.
What is still visible, and who reads it
Registrar, creation date, expiry date, status codes and the delegated nameservers remain public on most endings. That is enough to see who currently holds a name, when it renews, whether it is locked, and which supplier is answering for it.
Who reads it: competitors, brokers waiting for expiries, journalists, and occasionally a client's prospective investor. None of that is sinister, but it does mean a sloppy record is visible sloppiness.
Whose name shows when the record is not masked
Where privacy is off and redaction does not apply, whoever is in the registrant field is on public display. On agency-registered names that is frequently the agency, which quietly advertises to anyone looking that the client does not hold their own address.
It also reveals the client list. A competitor who works out which registrant covers thirty names has a prospecting list, assembled by you, published for free.
WHOIS as due diligence on a new account
Before quoting a migration, look the name up. An expiry three weeks out changes the plan. A 60-day transfer lock from a recent registrar change means the name is not moving yet, whatever the client believes. Nameservers pointing somewhere the client has not mentioned means there is another supplier in the story.
Five minutes here has saved more reseller weekends than any monitoring tool. Quote the migration after the lookup, not before.
The record that settles a dispute
Public masking changes nothing about the underlying registrant record held at the registrar. That is what governs transfers, recovery and any dispute, and inaccurate details there can void a registration or lose a name in a challenge.
So mask the publication if the client wants it, but keep the record itself true. A false registrant entry is not privacy; it is a weakness that surfaces at the exact moment somebody is contesting the name.
Jargon your clients will ask you to translate
Unexplained jargon becomes a support ticket, and on a reseller account somebody else's support ticket becomes yours. So we defined the terms once, in the language we would use across the counter to a peer.
Daily backups run on every plan and restores are yours to run, so a client's bad Tuesday does not have to become your Wednesday.
- Terms defined for the person who resells them
- What the client sees, noted on every entry
- Failure modes named, not glossed over
- Written by the people working the counter
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
A five-minute pre-quote check
Expiry, lock state and delegation, read before you promise a client a migration date rather than after.
What your record advertises
Why an agency in the registrant field publishes a client list nobody meant to publish.
Masked publicly, accurate underneath
The distinction that keeps a client's privacy without weakening their claim to the name.
Written peer to peer
No one is explained down to here. The entry assumes you know what a registrar is and tells you what it costs you.
The white-label line drawn
Where a term can leak your supplier to an end client, the entry says so plainly rather than leaving you to find out.
Cross-linked, never siloed
The neighbouring terms are linked from every entry, so one lookup grows into a working grip on the whole area.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Look the name up before you quote
Expiry date, status codes, registrar and nameservers. Any one of those can turn a two-day migration into a two-month wait, and it is cheaper to find out now.
- 2
Check what your own portfolio publishes
Run a lookup on a sample of the names you manage. If your company appears as registrant on client work, you have a correction job and a conversation to schedule.
- 3
Write it into the onboarding pack
Anything you explain twice belongs in the document a client signs at the start. It costs an afternoon once and saves the argument every time.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- WHOIS checked on every inherited name before a migration is quoted
- Registrant details accurate underneath, whatever the public view shows
- Private nameservers on your own domain, so client zones never name us
- White-label panel branding: your logo, your colours, your login address
- A 99.9% uptime target, watched by monitoring day and night
- cPanel on every account — the panel a client's next developer already knows
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
- Real people on the counter at any hour, including yours
- The renewal price printed on the tag matches the order price
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
Can a prospect work out that my agency hosts a client's site?
The delegated nameservers are public, so anyone can see where a zone is answered. Private nameservers on your own domain turn that into an advertisement for you rather than for a supplier. It is the single most visible piece of white labelling, and it is public by design.
What do I check in WHOIS before taking on an inherited domain?
Expiry date, registrar, lock status, any transfer-prohibited codes, and the current nameservers. Then ask the client who holds the registrar login. If nobody in the room knows, that is the real project, and it belongs in the quote rather than in your unpaid evenings.
A client's record still shows their previous agency. How do I fix it?
It needs a registrant change at the registrar, authorised by whoever currently holds the account — which may mean the previous agency has to co-operate. Get the client to make the request in their own name, in writing, and expect a 60-day transfer lock afterwards on many endings.
Does redaction mean I can stop keeping the record accurate?
No, and that is the trap. Redaction hides publication; it does not change what the registrar holds. Disputes, recovery and transfers are all decided against the underlying record, so an out-of-date registrant address is a live risk sitting quietly behind a masked page.
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