Transferring an existing domain name entails changing the registrar company that provides the domain name registration service, so after the transfer, you’ll have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS resource record modifications through the new domain name registrar. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most top-level domain name extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain name involves a few necessary steps and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a security feature, which is being embraced by more and more domain name registry organizations. It’s a default feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain name is locked, it will not be possible to start a transfer procedure, so nobody can even try to register your domain. The lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered in the first place and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.