Looking Up Domain Registration Details

KPanel has a WHOIS lookup that tells you whether a domain is registered, who holds it, when it expires, and which nameservers it uses, and it works for any domain, not just the ones on your account.

It is the tool to reach for when you are checking whether a name is genuinely taken, diagnosing why a domain is not resolving, confirming that a transfer completed, or verifying that your own privacy settings are doing what you expect.

Running a Lookup

Sign in to KPanel.
Go to /domains/whois.
Type the domain, for example example.com, and click Look up.

WHOIS Lookup page in KPanel

Enter the domain on its own: no http://, no www, no trailing slash. If the format is wrong you get "Enter a valid domain, e.g. example.com".

The lookup queries the registry live every time. Nothing is cached, so what you see is the current state rather than a stale copy, which is exactly what you want when you are watching a transfer or a nameserver change take effect.

Reading the Result

Row	What it tells you
Registrar	The company the domain is registered through. After a transfer to us, this is where you confirm it completed.
Registered	The date the domain was first registered. Relevant because most generic top-level domains cannot be transferred within 60 days of registration.
Expires	When the current registration term ends.
Last updated	When the registration record last changed. A recent date on a domain you did not touch is worth investigating.
DNSSEC	Signed or Unsigned. Confirms whether the parent registry holds a delegation signer record.
Registrant	The holder of the domain, or the privacy service if privacy is enabled.
Nameservers	The authoritative nameservers the registry has on file.
Status	The registry status codes on the domain.

Any value the registry does not publish shows as a dash rather than being guessed at.

If the domain is not registered at all, you get a clear answer: "{domain} isn't registered" and "No WHOIS record found: it may be available to register."

What the Status Codes Mean

The status row is the most useful and least read part of a lookup. The codes you will actually encounter:

ok or active: nothing unusual.
clientTransferProhibited: the registrar lock is on. This is the normal, recommended state for a domain you are not moving. It has to come off before a transfer. See Getting Your Domain Auth Code.
clientHold or serverHold: the domain has been withdrawn from DNS. It will not resolve at all. Usually a billing or compliance issue at the registrar or registry.
pendingTransfer: a transfer is in progress.
pendingDelete or redemptionPeriod: the registration has lapsed and is in the registry's recovery stage. Act immediately: see Domain Renewal, Expiry and Recovery.
autoRenewPeriod: the domain was recently renewed automatically.

Checking Your Own Domain

Three checks are worth doing on your own domains from time to time.

Is privacy working? Look at the Registrant row. With WHOIS privacy enabled you should see the privacy service or a redacted value rather than your name and address. If your personal details are showing on a domain where privacy should be on, that is a real finding.

Are the nameservers what I think? The Nameservers row shows what the registry publishes, which is the authoritative answer. If you expect Kapsule DNS you should see all four of ours: ns1.kapsulecloud.com, ns2.kapsulecloud.com, ns3.kapsuledns.com and ns4.kapsuledns.com. Anything else means the delegation is pointing somewhere you did not intend. See Nameservers.

Is DNSSEC actually live? The DNSSEC row reads from the parent registry, so it tells you whether the delegation signer record is genuinely published rather than whether you asked for it. See Enabling DNSSEC.

When a transfer is in flight, the Registrar row is the honest progress indicator. Approval emails, panel status pills and support estimates all describe intent; the registry record describes reality. When that row shows the gaining registrar, the transfer has actually happened.

The .nz Difference

Lookups for .nz domains, including .co.nz, .net.nz, .org.nz and the other second-level variants, are answered by the .nz registry directly rather than through the standard registration-data protocol used by most other top-level domains.

Two things follow from that:

The .nz registry does not publish a public expiry date. The Expires row on a .nz lookup shows a dash. This is not a fault and not missing data on our side: the registry simply does not make expiry public. Your accurate expiry date for a .nz domain you hold is the one in KPanel on the domain's Overview tab.

.nz registrant details are public. The .nz registry publishes registrant name, email, phone and address as policy, and offers no privacy service. That is why the WHOIS Privacy row on a .nz domain in KPanel shows a Not available pill. Read .nz Domain Rules for the full picture.

Limits and Fair Use

The lookup is rate limited to a modest number of queries a minute per visitor. If you hit it you will see "Too many lookups. Try again shortly." and can carry on in a moment.

If you want to check many names at once, that is what Bulk Domain Search is for: it checks availability for a pasted list and shows pricing for the ones you can register, which is a different question from the full registration record this page returns.

What a Lookup Cannot Tell You

Being clear about the limits saves a lot of wasted effort:

It does not tell you whether a domain is for sale. An unavailable domain may be actively used, parked, or held by somebody who would sell it. The record does not say.
It does not show the owner's real details when privacy is on. That is the point of privacy, and it applies to everybody else's domains as well as yours.
It does not tell you whether the website works. A domain can be perfectly registered with correct nameservers and still serve nothing. For that, read Website Not Loading.
It does not show your DNS records. Nameservers are published at the registry; the records themselves live in the zone. Use the DNS tab on your domain in KPanel for those.

Troubleshooting

A domain I know exists comes back as not registered. Check the spelling, particularly hyphens and the top-level domain. A very small number of registries do not publish registration data through the channels a lookup can reach, in which case the answer is genuinely unavailable rather than negative.

The registrant shows as redacted on a domain with no privacy service. Many registries redact registrant details by default now regardless of any privacy product, particularly for individuals. That is registry policy rather than something the holder chose.

The details are out of date. Registry records take time to reflect a change, and some registrars push updates on a schedule rather than immediately. Give a recent change an hour, then check again.

I just transferred and the registrar still shows the old one. Give it up to a day. If it has not moved after that, open a support ticket with the domain name.

A different lookup tool shows something else. Most public lookup tools cache heavily. The lookup in KPanel queries live, so where they disagree, this one is current.