Client domains · Reseller runbook · 10 minutes a name
How to register a domain name — Buy the Name Into Your Account, Not Your Client's Inbox
Every domain you buy for a client is either a recurring line on your invoice or a hostage held in somebody else's control panel — this decides which, before you pay.
Straight answer first
Register the name inside your own reseller account, with a registrant contact that reaches your desk rather than the client's, and the domain becomes something you renew, bill and control. Do it in the client's personal registrar login and you have created unpaid administration you cannot see and cannot fix at two in the morning.
Domain registrations, renewals and transfers run at roughly 20% margin on our platform. That is pennies on one name and a useful recurring line across ninety of them — but only if the names sit where your billing can reach them. The rest of this page is the order of operations, the verification trap that suspends launches, and what to put in the handover note.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 24 August 2026
Beginner
Bench skill needed
5
Stages per name
Free
Cost of asking us
Tested
On the platform you resell
Written for people who buy domains on behalf of other people: agencies, web studios and anyone running hosting under their own name. It assumes you already know what a registrar is, and that the interesting question is who holds the record.
The commercial detail matters more than the clicking. A name bought carelessly costs you nothing today and a fortnight of arguing eighteen months from now, usually in the week the client wanted to launch a campaign.
What the client thinks they are buying
Clients believe a domain is a purchase. It is a lease from a registry, renewed on a clock, held by whoever is named on the registrant record. If you never explain that, the first renewal invoice arrives looking like a surprise charge rather than the thing you told them about in month one.
Say it plainly in the proposal: the name is leased annually, you administer it, and the record can be moved to them on request. Clients who understand the arrangement stop treating renewals as optional, and stop opening a second registrar account of their own "just to check".
The margin on one name, and on ninety
Our margin on domain registrations, renewals and transfers is about 20%. On a single .com that is small change and not worth a line in your accounts. Across a portfolio it behaves like the rest of your recurring revenue: predictable, low-touch and already paid for by work you did once.
It also lands on top of a base that is already thin. A cPanel and WHM reseller plan starts at $14.99/mo plus $0.40 for each active client account, so domains are among the few things you can attach to an account without adding any per-account cost at all.
The verification email that suspends a launch
Every new gTLD registration triggers a registrant verification email from the registry. Ignore it for around a fortnight and the registry switches the domain off — resolution stops, mail stops, and it happens on the registry's schedule rather than yours. It is not a rare edge case; it is the single most common way a domain you bought correctly stops working.
The fix is routing, not diligence. Put a shared inbox you actually monitor on the registrant record — something like domains@yourbrand.com — rather than a client's personal address. Clients forward the important ones and delete the rest, and no amount of asking nicely changes that.
The handover note that ends the argument
Write down three things per client: who is named as registrant, what happens to the domain if the retainer ends, and how quickly you release an auth code when asked. Two paragraphs in the onboarding pack removes the entire category of dispute where a leaving client accuses you of holding their name.
It also protects you. A written release policy is the difference between a professional handover and a public complaint, and it costs nothing to write once and reuse across every account you open.
The platform these client accounts sit on
cPanel and WHM reseller tiers from $14.99/mo plus $0.40 per active client account, with private nameservers, overselling switched on and cPanel and WHM licensing already inside the plan price. Every screen a client opens carries your name.
The renewal price is the order price, so the margin you quote in month one is the margin you still have in year three. There is no setup fee to absorb and nothing added at signup.
- Private nameservers at no extra cost, e.g. ns1.yourbrand.com
- Your logo and colours on cPanel — our name stays out of sight
- cPanel and WHM licensing inside the plan price, whatever the account count
- Free migrations by our engineers, normally inside 24 hours
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
Written for the person billing
Every step assumes there is a client on the other side of it, and an invoice going out afterwards.
Margin stated, not implied
About 20% on registrations, renewals and transfers — quoted so you can price the line rather than guess at it.
The suspension trap flagged first
Registry verification is the step that kills launches. It is named before you reach it, not in a footnote.
Five stages, repeatable per client
The same order every time, so a junior can run it on the ninetieth account as safely as you ran the first.
Escalation that answers
Real people on the counter at every hour, so a stalled registration at midnight is our problem too.
Nothing that leaks your supplier
Private nameservers and branded panels mean the client reads your company name and nobody else's.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Decide whose name goes on the registrant record
Make this call before you search anything. Your company as registrant with the client as admin contact keeps administration simple; the client as registrant is cleaner if they may leave. Either is defensible. Silence is not.
- 2
Search, then sanity-check the ending against their market
Results come straight from the registries, so a name shown as free is free right now. Take .com for anyone selling across borders, a country ending where every customer is in one place, and check eligibility rules before you promise a ccTLD.
- 3
Match the registration term to the retainer
A twelve-month client gets twelve months. A brand you expect to still be looking after in five years gets five years, because each renewal cycle is another chance for a card to expire and a name to lapse on your watch.
- 4
Route the registry verification to an inbox you control
Put your own monitored address on the registrant record, then open the confirmation email the same day and click through. An unconfirmed registrant address gets the whole domain switched off, and the client will not remember being warned.
- 5
Switch auto-renew on and add the line to their invoice
Turn automatic renewal on in the client area immediately, then put the domain on the recurring invoice so the revenue and the cost move together. A renewal you pay for and forget to bill is a slow leak in your margin.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- cPanel and WHM licensing inside the plan price, whatever the account count
- Private nameservers at no extra cost, so the client reads your brand
- Overselling switched on from day one across every tier
- $0.40 per active client account — you pay for the accounts you hold
- Free SSL on every account you create, reissued before it lapses
- Daily backups, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- Free migrations handled by our engineers, normally inside 24 hours
- A 99.9% uptime target, watched by monitoring day and night
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- A 30-day money-back guarantee on hosting plans, 7 days on reseller
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
Should my company or the client be named as registrant?
Both work; pick deliberately and write it down. Your company as registrant keeps renewals, transfers and DNS changes inside one workflow, which is why most agencies do it. The client as registrant removes any argument at handover. What causes trouble is neither being decided until the day somebody leaves.
How much do I actually make reselling domains?
Our margin on registrations, renewals and transfers is around 20%, and you set the shelf price. Nobody builds a business on domain margin alone, but it attaches to accounts you already bill, needs no per-account fee, and renews without anyone doing anything.
A client is leaving and wants their domain — what do I do?
Release it. Unlock the name, hand over the auth code and let the transfer run; the client keeps whatever registration time is left. Sitting on a code buys you a fortnight of leverage and a permanent reputation, and a written release policy in your onboarding pack means the conversation is already settled.
Does the free year-one domain apply to accounts I open for clients?
The free first year comes with annual hosting orders, so it applies to the plan you buy on that basis rather than to every cPanel account you create inside WHM. For client names beyond that, you register them at the normal rate and keep the margin you set.
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