Establish
Look up the registrar, lock status and expiry for your domain and its .co.ke/.ke twin. Public records answer this in seconds.
GUIDES / CONTROL
Who really controls your domain and DNS?
The domain is the one asset everything else hangs off — the website, the email, the brand. Yet in many Kenyan businesses nobody can answer who owns it, where it renews or who can move it. This guide is the set of checks that make the answer definite.
Check Your Digital Readiness01 / THE CONTROL QUESTIONS
Five facts every business owner should be able to state.
- Who is the registrant — the business, or a developer, freelancer or agency?
- Who holds the registrar account login, and does the business have its own access?
- Is the transfer lock on, so the domain cannot be moved without deliberate steps?
- When does it expire, who receives the renewal notices, and who pays?
- Who can change the nameservers — because whoever controls DNS controls where the website and email actually go?
02 / THE COMMON FAILURE
Registered by someone else, renewed by nobody.
The recurring Kenyan pattern, covered at length in Insights: a domain registered in a helper's personal account, renewal notices going to an inbox nobody reads, and the business discovering the problem the day the website goes dark or the helper disappears. Recovering a lapsed or hostage domain is slow, sometimes expensive, and sometimes impossible.
The pair matters too: owning yourbusiness.co.ke without yourbusiness.ke (or the reverse) leaves the twin open for anyone — including someone who wants to send email that looks like yours.
03 / PUTTING IT RIGHT
The order of repair.
Repatriate
Get the registrar account (not just the domain) under a business-controlled login with a business-owned email address.
Lock and diarise
Turn the transfer lock on and put the renewal date, with a 60-day buffer, where the business will actually see it.
Document
Record who controls DNS, what each record does, and what would need to change in a provider exit — before the exit happens.
This guide describes public checks and account hygiene. It is not legal advice on domain disputes, and no check here proves a domain cannot be lost — it reduces the ways it can be.
YOUR NEXT STEP
Start with the problem - not the supplier.
Identify the priorities, understand the responsibility and then continue through the route that fits the work.