What is the registrar

It is often difficult to understand who owns a domain.

The registrar is an intermediary between the end customer and the web service.

In practice, the appointed company registers the domain on behalf of the client on a hosting service.

Differences between registry, registrar, and registrant

The differences between these three actors are soon told:

• The registry: is the administrator and manager of the purchasing and modifying operations of domains. It manages the domain extensions (.it, .com, etc.) and holds the power to accredit the use of the domain itself. In Italy, the registry is represented by the CNR in Pisa (National Research Council) in the NIC division (Institute of Informatics and Technology);
• The registrar is the intermediary that communicates with the registry and gives the possibility to the registrant (we will see shortly) to set up their own domain on the web. The registrar works on behalf of the registrant and is accredited with... [text cut off]

ICANN (the international entity that oversees domain purchases). Examples of registrars include Aruba, SiteGround, and all those private companies that manage the buying and selling of domains on behalf of the registrant by interfacing with the registry. Often, the registrar also holds other services related to the domain such as any associated email boxes, DNS management, hosting, and other services useful for the development of websites.

The registrar, in order to carry out this type of work, will have to pay an insurance fee to the registry every year to protect the rights of the registrant.

Finally, the registrant.

• Registrant: we talked about it a moment ago. Basically, when referring to the registrant, we mean the end customer who instructs the registrar through the registry to purchase, manage, or modify a domain on the web.

The registrant is the owner of the domain and as we will see, their personal details will appear in the data connected to them; furthermore, they will be assigned the annual domain renewal fees.

How to Determine Who the Registrar of a Domain Is

We have seen how, for various reasons, when one wants to find out who the registrar of a website is, checks are made, for example with whois it will be easy to trace back to the registrar itself.

In these tools, there is usually a dedicated section at the bottom which, as we know, may or may not coincide with the technical data (if the site and hosting are allocated with the same company).

In the part dedicated to the registrar, there will be the corporate data of those who acted as an intermediary for the purchase of the domain (the registrar in question) while right above (if not covered by privacy) there will be the details of the registrant, also defined as Admin Contact.

It is nonetheless important to have a clear understanding of the parties involved in purchasing a domain in order to trace back the history of that URL.