Last month, I decided to transfer it out to Cloudflare. That simple decision turned into weeks of frustration, a pointless £12 registrar fee, and the discovery of a completely ridiculous bug.

Here’s the timeline.

Step 1: The Wix Lock-In Trap

I assumed moving the domain would be as simple as changing the IPS tag.

Instead, I landed in a dead loop:

• I set the IPS tag to CLOUDFLARE.

• Both Wix and Cloudflare confirmed this transfer could never succeed, because Cloudflare requires domains to point their nameservers at Cloudflare first — and Wix doesn’t allow customers to change nameservers.

• Wix support told me to transfer the domain to a different registrar first.

• But when I tried, Wix’s portal displayed this message:

  

  “You’ve already requested to transfer example.co.uk away from Wix. The transfer is in progress and can take up to 7 days after you’ve finished the instructions from your new provider.”

• I waited 7 days. Nothing happened.

• I retried. Same message. Same failure.

• I spent an hour on Wix live chat. They escalated the issue.

• Another week later, their registrar partner finally “unstuck” the domain.

To be fair, Wix probably has no choice but to list Cloudflare as an IPS tag option. That part is fine. The real problem is that once you pick it, and it fails, Wix’s system won’t let you change it again. You’re trapped until support intervenes.

Step 2: Escaping to AWS

Once Wix finally released the domain, I transferred it to AWS Route 53. That part worked fine.

I updated the DNS nameservers in AWS to point at Cloudflare, then set the IPS tag to Cloudflare.

So far, so good.

Then I tried to initiate the transfer inside Cloudflare. It failed again.

Step 3: Cloudflare’s Red Herring

Cloudflare support told me the transfer failed because I had changed the IPS tag before initiating the transfer request.

Okay, but now the tag was already set to Cloudflare, and AWS doesn’t let you “transfer back to itself” (which actually makes sense).

So I was stuck again.

Step 4: The £12 Detour

To “reset” the IPS tag, I had to bounce the domain through another registrar. I randomly picked names.co.uk, not realizing they charged a £12 fee for transfer-outs.

• AWS → names.co.uk: smooth

• names.co.uk → AWS: smooth too, but it cost me £12

Now the IPS tag was reset and I could try Cloudflare again.

Step 5: Still Broken

This time I followed Cloudflare’s support advice:

1. Request the transfer in Cloudflare first.

2. Then, once it’s pending, change the IPS tag.

Except step 1 never worked.

The transfer request in Cloudflare failed immediately, so I never even got the chance to update the IPS tag. Same useless error.

Step 6: The WTF Moment

After all this wasted time and money, Cloudflare’s registrar team finally revealed the actual problem:

My Organization field (“n/a”) was too short.

Their system silently requires at least four characters. But instead of saying that, the UI displayed a completely misleading error:

“Something went wrong… Please request your current Registrar to update the IPS Tag to ‘CLOUDFLARE’.”

I changed the Organization field to "none", retried, and suddenly everything worked.

I asked Cloudflare to credit me back the £12 I’d wasted following their wrong advice. They declined. Not surprising, but still disappointing.

Lessons

• Wix: Listing Cloudflare as an IPS tag is fine. But when that fails, their system should let you change it again. Instead, it traps you for weeks until support escalates. That’s the real bug.

• Cloudflare: This was the real surprise. Their registrar support turned out to be at the same level as Wix: slow, wrong advice, and misleading error messages. Unbelievable from a company that runs critical internet infrastructure.

• AWS: By far the most reliable experience. AWS Route 53 lets you change the IPS tag freely and was the only registrar that emailed me to confirm the transfer request before completing it. That’s how the process should work.

• Overall: Poor registrar implementations, not the underlying standards, are what make domain transfers so painful.

All I wanted to do was transfer a domain. Instead I spent weeks stuck between Wix and Cloudflare, and £12 poorer, because someone decided “n/a” was too short.