Table of Contents

Consolidating your handles

So you have 14 different handles and it is driving you insane? You just want to manage your domains under a single handle?

Before you begin, however, you need to choose the handle that you want to be your “definitive” handle. Be sure that it contains your full contact information and that it is correct and up-to-date, to avoid problems in the future.

Consolidating your handles only involves two operations, and for security and legal reasons we cannot consolidate your handles for you; these are:

  1. Changing the owner (click here to see how to do this)
  2. Changing the contacts (click here to see how to do this)

The ownership change will be free if Gandi created the handle following an incoming transfer on our former transfer system and if the extension allows it, or if we created it when we went from V1 to V2 of our website. It is also free if you are have B rates or higher in other cases. If any of these apply, please contact our support who will give you a promo code for the domain's owner change so it is free).

All that you need to do is to change the owner to be the “definitive” handle, and change the contacts to be the “definitive” handle. Once this has been done, you will see that you only have to worry about one handle!

Deleting unused handles

Once you have successfully changed the owner and contacts of your domains to be a single handle, you will be left with a bunch that no longer do anything. See Deleting unused handles.

Why do I have so many handles?

It is common to have more than one handle at Gandi. This is because:

  • Transfers: when you transferred a domain to Gandi under our old transfer system, or you transfer it under our current system without clicking the “owner change” option, we create a new handle for the domain's owner from the whois information provided by the former registrar. This is done to protect you from the possibility of theft. For more information, see Domain name trades.
  • Gandi V1 to Gandi V2: On June 1st, 2006, a change was made to our system; part of this change involved creating an owner handle for each domain based on the information provided when the domain was originally registered. However, since Gandi V1 only attributed 3 handles (admin, tech, and billing) to each domain, when the owner handle was created, it was a new one. (More on this here.)
  • Other: it is entirely possible that when you registered a domain through a reseller, friend, or someone else, that they made a handle in your name, even though you may have already had one.

It is important to understand that a handle has legal rights on a domain. Even though it may be your name on a handle, until you have gained access to that handle, you cannot use it for manipulating your domain.

See also

Last modified: 08/12/2013 at 15:58 by Laura S. (Gandi)

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