Verify your domain contact email (WHOIS)

ICANN, the body that oversees domain names, requires the registrar to confirm the registrant email on every domain. When you register an international domain with us (.com, .net, .org and others), or change the registrant name or email, the registrar sends you an email with a link. If nobody clicks that link in time, the domain is suspended.

This does not apply to .cr domains, which are registered at dominios.cr.

How to recognize the email

• Subject: IMMEDIATE VERIFICATION required for yourdomain.com
• From: CR Servers (Sistemas Edenia Internacional, S.A.), address donotreply@name-services.com (sometimes info2@enom.com)
• To: the domain's registrant email, which can differ from your client area email
• Link: opens a page on www.enom.com; the address starts with http://www.enom.com/raaverification/

It arrives a few minutes after registration (up to half an hour). In Gmail it often lands in Spam, Promotions or Updates. Hotmail and Outlook.com addresses may not receive it at all, not even in Junk (see If the email never arrives).

Don't click a link that goes anywhere else: sender addresses can be faked, but the real page is always on enom.com (it opens www.enom.com/raaverification/ and continues to cp.enom.com/raaverification/).

What to do

1. Open the registrant mailbox and search for the subject above, including Spam.
2. Click the link. A page confirms the verification. It shows the Tucows/Enom logo: that's our domain registrar, not a different company.
3. That's it. You don't need to reply.

If your email address was already verified through another domain, you may get no message. Then there is nothing to do.

Deadline

• New domain: about 15 days from registration.
• Registrant change on an existing domain: shorter, about 7 days.

While the domain is pending, we email you a reminder every few days and resend the registrar's message. If the date gets close, our team may also contact you.

If the domain is already suspended

Signs: the website and email stop overnight, and opening the domain in a browser shows an ICANN verification page instead of your site. The hosting control panel, site files and mailboxes are fine: it's a registrar hold, not an outage on our side.

To reactivate it:

1. Find the same email (subject IMMEDIATE VERIFICATION required for …) and click the link, or
2. Open your domain in a browser, type the numbers the page shows and choose Resend verification email to get a new one.

Your website and email come back within a few hours; allow up to 24 hours for DNS to update. Don't rebuild the site or recreate mailboxes.

If the email never arrives

Microsoft mailboxes (hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com) sometimes discard the registrar's email without putting it in Junk, so resending it doesn't help. Change the registrant email to an address with another provider, such as Gmail: open a ticket or reach us by phone or WhatsApp and we change it. The registrar sends a new verification email to that address within minutes.

If you no longer have that mailbox

Open a ticket or reach us by phone or WhatsApp. We change the registrant email to one you check, and the registrar then sends a new verification email to that address.

Prevention

Use a permanent address you check as the registrant email, not a shared inbox or one on the same domain you're registering (if the domain is suspended, that mailbox stops working too). Avoid Hotmail and Outlook.com addresses for the same reason as above.