2026-10-06

How to close a domain sale safely: escrow, the transfer, and getting paid

A yes is not a sale. Here is the five-step escrow flow that actually gets you paid, the 60-day transfer rule that decides whether delivery takes ten minutes or a week, what escrow costs at each price band, and the red flags that mean walk away.

A domain sale has two moments that feel like the finish line. The first is the email where the buyer says he will take it. The second is the day the money lands in your account. Between those two moments is a gap where most first-time sellers lose either the deal or the domain, and it has nothing to do with the price.

The gap exists because both sides are afraid of the same thing from opposite directions. You are afraid to hand over a name and then spend six weeks chasing a wire. He is afraid to send money and then watch you vanish with the domain. Neither fear is unreasonable, and no amount of friendly email closes the gap. A third party holding the money does.

A "yes" is not a sale

The most expensive mistake in this business is treating enthusiasm as payment. Buyers are enthusiastic for free. Until money is sitting with a licensed escrow service and has been verified, you own a conversation, not a sale — and the domain stays listed everywhere you had it listed.

So the first rule is short: never transfer anything, and never hand over an authorization code, before an escrow service confirms the buyer's funds are secured.

The second rule is shorter: create the transaction yourself. Type the escrow company's address into your own browser and build the transaction from there. Never open a transaction, invoice, or "secure payment page" from a link somebody emailed you, no matter how official it looks. That one habit removes an entire category of fraud aimed at sellers.

The five steps, in order

This is the flow Escrow.com uses for domains, and every serious service follows the same logic:

• Agree on terms. The domain, the price, who pays the escrow fee, and the inspection period. All four in writing inside the transaction, not in a chat.
• The buyer pays the escrow service, not you. Wire, card or PayPal — a wire is the cheapest and the slowest. Escrow verifies and secures the funds and only then tells you to transfer.
• You transfer the domain. Either a registrar push or a full transfer between registrars, depending on where the buyer is (next section). If it is your first sale, consider the domain concierge option that many escrow services offer: you pay a little more and somebody else does the transfer paperwork with both registrars.
• The buyer accepts. When the escrow service confirms the registrant in WHOIS is the buyer, or the inspection period simply runs out, the deal is done. An inspection period is usually measured in days, not weeks — if a buyer demands a 30-day hold, that is a negotiating position, not a standard term.
• You get paid. Most services disburse to your bank the same or next business day after acceptance. Ask about the disbursement fee before you agree on who pays it.

Push or transfer: the rule that decides your timeline

There are only two ways to move a name, and choosing the right one turns a week into ten minutes:

• Registrar push. If buyer and seller are both at the same registrar, the domain moves between two accounts inside that registrar. It is instant, free, and carries no waiting period. This is the fastest close there is.
• Registrar transfer. When the buyer is elsewhere, you unlock the domain, copy its authorization (EPP) code, and he starts a transfer with his registrar and approves the confirmation email. Under ICANN rules this usually completes in about five to seven days.

Now the part that ruins deals: a domain cannot be transferred to another registrar within 60 days of its registration, and within 60 days of any previous transfer. That rule is policy, not a registrar's mood, and no support ticket will override it.

Practically, that means a name you registered three weeks ago cannot be moved by transfer today, even though it is perfectly sellable. The fix is to push it instead: have the buyer open an account at your current registrar, and hand the name over inside that registrar. Tell him this before you agree on a delivery date, because a buyer who expects the domain "in an hour" and waits a week starts asking for his money back, and a refund midway through an escrow is a conversation nobody enjoys.

What escrow actually costs

On small domain sales, Escrow.com's domain fee starts around 2.6% with a $50 minimum, then steps down as the price rises — roughly 2.4% above $5,000 and lower again above $50,000. Two details matter more than the headline percentage:

• How the buyer pays. Credit cards and PayPal add processing costs on top of the escrow fee. A wire avoids most of that.
• Who pays. Escrow fees can be split down the middle, paid by the buyer, or absorbed by you. When a deal is stuck on fifty dollars of friction, splitting the fee is the cheapest concession in negotiation — never split the price.

And keep in mind that fee tables are edited regularly. Quote the buyer a number you have checked today, from the fee calculator, not one you remember from a forum post.

When the marketplace is the escrow

If the sale happens on a marketplace — Afternic, Sedo, Dan and the rest — the platform acts as escrow and takes a commission instead of a separate fee, commonly somewhere between about 9% and 20% depending on the platform and whether you accept its fast-transfer network. That is not automatically the worse deal: the platform solves the buyer's trust problem for you, handles most of the transfer, and may be where your buyer found the name in the first place.

The decision worth making early is the channel itself. If you spent a month finding the operator who needs the name — the work I described in how to find a buyer for a domain — you can close directly through escrow, keep the commission, and control the conversation. If your name sells because it is listed where buyers browse, the commission is the cost of that distribution. Decide before you quote, because switching channels after the price is agreed means renegotiating the price.

The red flags that mean walk away

Every one of these is a real pattern, and each of them has cost somebody a domain:

• Payment after transfer. "Send me the auth code and I will pay you today." No escrow service on earth works this way.
• Proof by screenshot. A payment confirmation that exists only as an image, a PDF, or an email header. The escrow dashboard is the only proof that counts.
• A link instead of an address. Any escrow page, invoice, or "settlement agent" that arrived by email rather than from you typing the address yourself.
• Overpayment with a refund request. The oldest one there is: too much money "sent by mistake", please refund the difference before the transfer clears.
• No written terms. A buyer who wants the whole deal to live in chat with no transaction created anywhere, and gets impatient when you slow down to write it properly.

None of this means every buyer is a criminal. It means the honest ones will happily use escrow, because escrow protects them too. The buyer who refuses any escrow while insisting you trust him has told you what you need to know.

The hour after the money arrives

The sale is not finished when the funds appear. Do these five things the same afternoon:

• Confirm the registrant. Check WHOIS and see the buyer's name or company where yours used to be. If escrow has released funds, this should already be true — verify it anyway.
• Pull the listing everywhere. Afternic, Sedo, Dan, your own landing page, forums. A name that sells twice costs you a refund and a reputation, and it happens more often than people admit.
• Write down the number. Final price, date, buyer type, platform, fee paid. That record is the raw material for every future appraisal you make — it is how you learn what your own names are actually worth, which is the subject of what is my domain worth.
• Keep the paperwork. For anything above a few thousand dollars, save the escrow receipt and a one-page sale agreement. Your accountant will ask, and a future buyer of your portfolio may too.
• Reset your expectations of the name. It is not yours anymore, including the 60-day transfer lock that now follows the buyer.

The short version

Agree the terms in writing, let a licensed escrow hold the money, transfer by push when you can, never hand over an authorization code before funds are verified, and pull the listing the moment it sells. Do that and the thirty seconds between "he said yes" and "he paid" stops being the dangerous part of the sale.