Transferring an existing domain involves switching the domain registrar that provides the domain registration service, so after the transfer itself, you will have to manage things like renewal fees or DNS resource record modifications through the new company. The transfer process itself is standard with most gTLD and ccTLD extensions. Some country-code extensions are more specific and entail different steps, but in the general case transferring a domain name entails a few necessary steps and one of them is unlocking the domain. The domain lock is a safety option, which is being adopted by more and more domain name registry operators. It is a default feature supported by all gTLDs. If a domain is locked, it will be impossible to initiate a transfer process, so nobody can even attempt to take your domain name. The lock can be annulled only through the account where the domain is registered in the first place and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default the moment they are registered.