The contact details on a domain
Four contacts sit on every domain. One of them decides whether you can prove the name is yours.
Updated 02 Sept 2026
Every domain carries four contacts at the registry: registrant, administrative, technical and billing. They are usually the same person, and one of them matters far more than the other three.
The registrant is the owner
The registrant is who the registry records as owning the name. Everything else is a role. If the registrant details are somebody who has left the company, the name is theirs in the only record that decides disputes.
The domain page lists the contacts held for the name, with the role each one plays.
A contact is a record in its own right rather than a copy stored on each domain, so one contact can sit behind twenty names and correcting it once corrects all of them. That is a convenience until it is a surprise: a contact used by several domains cannot be edited while any of them is suspended, and it cannot be deleted at all while a domain still points at it.
Not every extension carries four. .uk and .nz hold a registrant and nothing else, so there is no separate administrative or billing contact to keep current — the one record is the whole of it.
Why the email address is the one to keep working
Registry mail goes to the address on the contact, not to the address you sign in with. Expiry warnings, transfer approvals and annual verification notices all arrive there — and a domain can be suspended for an address that bounces.
Does changing the registrant lock the domain?
Only if you change the name, the company or the email address — those three make it a change of ownership rather than a correction, and there is a way to avoid the lock. Changing who owns a domain sets out both routes. Everything else on the contact can be corrected freely.
Can I put the company name instead of a person?
Yes, and for a business you should. Put the organisation in the company field and a person who will still be there next year on the contact. A domain registered to a personal address is a domain that becomes an argument when that person leaves.