Transferring an existing domain entails changing the registrar that provides the domain name registration service, so after the transfer, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS resource record updates through the new company. The transfer process itself is standard with most universal and country-specific Top-Level Domain extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain name involves several necessary steps and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a safety option, which is being adopted by more and more domain registry operators. It’s a standard feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain name is locked, it will be impossible to initiate a transfer procedure, so nobody can even try to take your domain. The domain lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default when they are registered.