I run a small job-search SaaS at jobmatch.bot. In April I bought the domain through Manus's website builder. "Buy Your Domain Instantly... Your App, Your Address" is how their blog markets the feature. I paid, built my product on it, 300+ users signed up.

In May I decided to move hosting off Manus. That is when I found out:

- The domain was registered to Manus's own entity (Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd.), not to me.

- The registrar is Global Domain Group LLC (ICANN IANA ID 3956), a white-label registrar whose own homepage advertises "ensuring domains registered through GDG are not associated with a popular registrar".

- The registrar's RDAP abuse contact phone is literally "+1.0000000".

- The ICANN 60-day transfer lock expired June 2. The domain is still clientTransferProhibited as of June 10, and my requests for the auth code (or a change of registrant) have been refused or ignored since early June.

I filed an ICANN transfer complaint on June 3 and have escalated to Amazon Registry (the .bot registry operator) and Singapore's consumer-protection channels. Butterfly Effect is a Singapore company. Meta acquired it in December for a reported $2B+ and integrated its operations; China's regulator ordered the deal unwound in April and Meta has said it will comply, so who exactly owns Manus right now is genuinely unclear. None of that changes who is holding my domain.

My migration has been done for a month - the new stack runs in parallel production. The only thing Manus still controls is the DNS.

The lesson I would pass on: if you "buy a domain" inside a website builder, check the WHOIS immediately. If you are not the registrant, you do not own the domain. Your platform does, and you will discover what that means exactly when you try to leave.

Has anyone successfully gotten a domain out of Manus / Global Domain Group? Was there a support channel or escalation path that actually worked?