Domain portfolio owners & buyers
Check a domain's registration, DNS, and mail setup before you buy or after you transfer it
AdminKit's free WHOIS/RDAP, DNS, and MX lookups let anyone buying, selling, or managing a portfolio of domains check a domain's registrar, expiry date, status locks, nameservers, and whether its mail still resolves, today, since a rushed purchase or a registrar transfer can get any of those details wrong without anyone noticing until a renewal, a sale, or mail delivery is already affected, with no bulk portfolio-watch or scheduled monitoring built yet.
Updated October 30, 2026
At a glance
The problem
Buying, selling, or simply holding a portfolio of domains involves a handful of checks that are each simple on their own but easy to skip under time pressure. Before paying for a domain from a marketplace or a private seller, the registrar, expiry date, status locks, and nameservers it actually carries are worth confirming against what the seller claims, since a WHOIS/RDAP record is public and doesn’t depend on trusting anyone’s word.
A transfer introduces its own failure points. Nameservers need to actually repoint to the new registrar or DNS provider, and if the domain sends or receives mail, its MX records need to keep resolving to a host that’s still there, not one that quietly stopped answering during the move. Because DNS changes propagate on each record’s own TTL, a check run minutes after a transfer can show stale results that look like a problem but are just caching catching up.
And a renewal is only as safe as whoever is watching the date. A portfolio of any size means tracking several expiry dates at once, each following the same registrar notice-and-grace-period timeline, with no single dashboard today that watches all of them for you.
Talk to an expert
Huy Nguyen (David), Founder & CEO, Netbase JSC
Ask how AdminKit fits domain portfolio owners & buyers — setup, timeline, or pricing.
What you can do for free today
- Look up a domain’s registrar, dates, status and nameservers via RDAP — fetched directly from your browser via the public rdap.org proxy, with no account needed and no query seen by AdminKit’s own servers.
- Check every DNS record a domain publishes, including NS — confirm nameservers actually point at the registrar or provider you expect, especially right after a transfer.
- Look up a domain’s MX records and confirm each host resolves — shows priority order and makes a second round of A/AAAA lookups, so a listed-but-dead mail host doesn’t look fine just because it’s in the record.
For reading every field in a registration result, see how to read a Whois/RDAP lookup result, and for what the renewal clock actually looks like once a date passes, see what happens when a domain expires. If a check right after a transfer looks stale, DNS propagation and TTL explained covers what controls that delay, and how to read an MX lookup result walks through the priority and host-resolution fields together. See also how AdminKit’s Whois/RDAP tool compares to who.is, including the historical-archive and monitoring features who.is sells that AdminKit’s tool doesn’t have.
What AdminKit will add
AdminKit’s Check API is in early access and development, documented to cover DNS, mail, TLS, port, MQTT and Modbus checks as structured, scriptable results. A domain’s WHOIS/RDAP registration record isn’t one of those check types, so even once the API ships, tracking renewal dates or registration changes across a portfolio will likely stay a manual, one-at-a-time lookup through the website rather than something scriptable in bulk. DNS and MX lookups sit closer to the API’s documented scope, which may make confirming a transfer’s DNS and mail records easier to automate later, though neither is live yet.
There’s no portfolio dashboard, renewal watchlist, or bulk-monitoring product built today, for any part of a domain portfolio. The honest status is that each tool above is a single, point-in-time check you run yourself, one domain at a time.
This page is general guidance, not a security audit of your specific network — see our disclaimer for what AdminKit's guidance does and does not commit to.
Frequently asked questions
What should I check before buying a domain from a marketplace or private seller?
Its WHOIS/RDAP record: the current registrar, registration and expiry dates, status codes, and nameservers. A status like clientTransferProhibited is a normal anti-hijacking lock the seller needs to remove before a transfer can complete, not a red flag by itself — but a registrar, nameserver, or expiry date that doesn't match what the seller told you is worth asking about before paying.
After a transfer, how do I confirm DNS and mail actually moved correctly?
Run a DNS lookup for the domain's NS records to confirm they point at the new registrar or DNS provider, and an MX lookup to confirm mail still resolves to a real, reachable host rather than a stale record. Both can take time to reflect everywhere while the old records' TTL expires, which is a caching delay, not a sign anything went wrong.
Can I track renewal dates for many domains in one place with AdminKit?
Not today. Each WHOIS/RDAP lookup runs one domain at a time through the website, with no portfolio dashboard, watchlist, or renewal alert built yet. What happens when a domain expires covers the ICANN renewal and redemption timeline, so you know how much runway a date that's about to pass actually gives you.
Will AdminKit's planned Check API let me script these lookups across a portfolio?
Not for the registration lookup specifically. The Check API's documented scope is DNS, mail, TLS, port, MQTT and Modbus checks; a domain's WHOIS/RDAP record isn't one of those check types, so a registration lookup across many domains will likely stay a one-at-a-time website check even once that API ships. DNS and MX lookups fall closer to its documented scope, though it isn't live yet either.
A domain I'm interested in shows no WHOIS/RDAP record at all. Is it available to register?
Usually, but not always — most often it means the domain is unregistered, though a small and shrinking number of registries still haven't finished rolling out RDAP. Confirm through the registry or a registrar's own availability check before assuming it's free to register.
Want AdminKit set up for you?
Tell us about your setup — we will follow up about early access and, if you need it, expert help.
How AdminKit works with you
- Delivered remotely — Netbase JSC, the company behind AdminKit, has worked with clients in 80 countries.
- Contracts and invoices are issued by Netbase JSC; payment goes to the company by bank transfer to Netbase JSC's company account or PayPal Business.
- Talk to the CEO, Huy Nguyen (David), directly on WhatsApp or by email at [email protected].