Domain owner, Admin-C and WHOISWho owns the domain and who manages it

Published on October 20, 2026

The roles at a glance

Only the first row is decisive. Whoever is entered as the owner has the domain - all other roles are supporting work. So with every registration, make sure that you yourself or your company is listed there, and not the agency that built the site.

The Admin-C no longer exists for .de

A point many guides on the web still get wrong: DENIC abolished the Admin-C role on 25 May 2018 - at the same time as the GDPR took effect. Since then, .de domains only have the owner.

This also removed the former rule that the Admin-C had to be a person resident in Germany. A different requirement has taken its place: if the owner has neither residence nor registered office in Germany, they must, on request, name an authorized recipient for service with a German address to DENIC within two weeks (Section 184 of the German Code of Civil Procedure).

With other extensions, the Admin-C remains

For generic extensions such as .com, .net, .org and for many foreign country extensions, the Admin-C is still a separate contact in the registration record. At MainHoster.de, you manage owner and Admin-C in the web interface.

In practice, you enter the same person in both fields unless you deliberately put someone in charge of administration. A different Admin-C mainly makes sense in companies - for example, when the domain belongs to the company but a specific employee is the contact person.

Country-bound extensions and trustee services

Some country extensions require a residence or registered office in the respective country. Examples:

• .eu - residence or registered office in the EU or EU citizenship required.
• .at and .ch - open, no residency requirement.
• Other ccTLDs require a local presence; providers solve this via so-called trustee services.

Among the extensions offered by MainHoster.de - .de, .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .eu, .at, .ch - this only matters for .eu.

WHOIS and RDAP since the GDPR

For decades, WHOIS was the public source of information on who owns a domain. Since the GDPR, personal data there is largely redacted: for natural persons, you usually only see the status, registrar and dates.

• For .de, DENIC only provides technical data and the status via its lookup. Owner data is given to those who prove a legitimate interest.
• For generic extensions, an anonymized contact form often appears instead of the email address.
• RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) is the technical successor of WHOIS - structured, authenticatable and therefore better suited for tiered access rights.

Practical consequence: a separate WHOIS privacy service, as sold by US providers, is mostly unnecessary for private individuals in a European context - the data is not public anyway.

Change of owner: assigning the domain to someone else

A change of owner is something different from a change of provider. Here, the person behind the domain changes; the registrar can stay the same.

• Both sides must agree - the previous and the new owner.
• With generic extensions, a 60-day transfer lock starts afterwards; a change of provider is not possible during that time.
• So the order is: transfer first, then change the owner - not the other way round.

What you should watch out for

• Never let the agency be entered as the owner. Whoever is in the owner field can sell or delete the domain. If you part ways, that gets expensive.
• Keep the email address up to date. Registries send confirmations and deadline notices there. A dead address can cost you a domain.
• State the company name correctly. For companies, the full company name including legal form belongs in the owner field, not the managing director's name.
• Check after moving house. Address changes also affect the domain - especially with .de and the authorized recipient for service.

If you are just getting started, What is a domain? explains the basics, and Umlaut domains & IDN covers names with special characters.

Frequently asked questions