You can purchase and register a new domain directly in RAI in three steps:
- Check domain availability
- Add domain owner information
- Add domain admin information
See how
1. Check availability
Navigate to the account menu of the specific site you want to register a domain on. Click the Subscriptions tab and find the Domain subscriptions category in the list of available subscriptions. Click the Add Domain button and check the availability of the domain you want to purchase.
RAI will inform you about the availability of the domain. If the domain is available, follow the remaining steps in this article. If the domain isn't available but owned by your customer (hosted with another registrar), read this article about domain transfers.
2. Add owner information
After RAI has confirmed that the domain is available, you need to fill in owner information for the domain. The owner of the domain is the customer you are registering the domain for.
The owner information fields are pre-filled with data from the Account > Customer Info tab in RAI. If everything looks correct, move on to the next tab (Admin).
3. Add admin information
The Admin information always has to be your business information (as the administrator of the domain), not the customer's information. The information in this section is pre-filled with data from Default and Settings in the Admin section in RAI.
Extra fields and DNS settings
Depending on the TLD you are trying to register, you may have to fill in additional fields in order to comply with local regulations. For example, when registering a .ca domain you must specify the Registrant's legal classification to meet CIRA's Canadian Presence Requirement. Similar requirements exist in many other countries when purchasing ccTLDs.
In the DNS tab you can add the relevant DNS settings. When you manually add DNS settings for a domain, the new settings will overwrite the default DNS settings when issuing a domain registration.
Checklist before registering a new domain
Before registering a domain for a customer, it's recommended to check the following:
1. Don't use email or domain names with special characters, e.g. á, é, í, ó, ú, ý.
2. Double check if the owner's email is working before registering a new domain. If it is not working, ICANN verification for gTLD's will fail. Checking an email can be done with mxtoolbox.com.
You register the domain by clicking Register Domain and Start Subscription.
Attach the domain to your website
Once you've registered the domain, you need to attach it to the customer's website. Please note that the domain won't be active on the site until the domain owner has completed the required consent procedures (for ccTLDs only). For gTLDs, the domain will be active immediately but remember that the domain owner will need to complete an ICANN validation within 15 days from the registration date.
Domain registration FAQ
Q: I've checked the availability of the domain www.maylizz.com. RAI says it's not available but I know the domain is not registered by anyone else.
A: When checking availability in RAI, make sure that you enter the desired domain name without 'www' added in front. In the example, the search input should be 'maylizz.com'.
