Any advice to transfer registration from GoDaddy
 

Many years ago I learned the lesson of not registering your domain with your webhost. There was a lot of foot dragging and excuses. At that time I used NetSol to get the transfer moving. That was back when NetSol had a virtual monopoly.
Some 12 years ago I created a new site and domain name. I registered that with GoDaddy. I have since renewed that registration whenever needed. The registration doesn't expire until 2017, but this is a pretty active site, so I don't want hiccups. The domain registered with NetSol was allowed to expire. I moved hosts a couple of years ago and thought about changing registrars, but took the easy route. Now it's time to do it. Any advice to make things less of a hassle?

Use Namecheap. That really is the best registrar these days.
Where are you hosted?

A couple of years ago, I switched to servers hosted by the shopping cart developer. It was getting to the point that I wanted to avoid the finger pointing game. So far, they have been very responsive. I've gotten honest answers and any difficulty is taken care of quickly. As technology changes ever faster, I wanted to learn without having to do everything myself.

We always like to know what members are running (script/CMS) and the hosts they're using. Sometimes we may learn something from our members. Or other times we can issue warnings about things we know that have potential issues. That's what a forum is all about!

So please do share which cart that is. :)

I'm not trying to be secretive. I use Avactis Next for my shopping cart. Back when I start with the cart, it was the only one that allowed me to customize it the way I wanted. It is heavily MySQL based, and between the php processor and MySQL controller, those common bottlenecks were always a concern. The "best" host that seemed able to handle my needs was Rochen, headquartered in the UK, with the US servers in Dallas. But, the load times and the script timeouts were increasing. After many emails, I decided to transfer the store to Avactishosting. Like Rochen, the expectation is that you are not a newb. The handholding is pretty non-existent. On the other hand, the few issues that I've had are not only handled quickly, I'm given an explanation of what was done and why. I'm pretty thorough in describing the issue and what I have already done, so that sets a tone of respect and professionalism.

Is it Avactis.com? (I didn't see a "Next" anywhere.) Never heard of it. Looks interesting. I wonder how it compared to Magento. In years past, before switching to WordPress only (non-ecommerce sites), we created Magento sites for quite a few clients. Magento is very powerful software, when used correctly. The problem with it was always resources and somewhat complex design.

Rochen has a good reputation, but I think there are better options.

Being given an explanation by hosting techs is (sadly) somewhat rare. That's actually one of the primary factors in support, when we rank hosts.

Yes, avactis.com will get you there. Avactis started in the early 2000's as an e-commerce project from Pentasoft. The original design was somewhat similar to what Magento now has. It ran into very similar resource issues. They saw a market for a customizable cart that could be modified by those intimidated by HTML, PHP, CSS, and MySQL. But development and support slowed as money became ever tighter. Somewhere around 2012, Hummingbird Web Solutions out of India purchased all of the rights to Avactis. Development of the cart had pretty much ended with the release of version 2.1.1. That was the version that I had moved from Rochen to avactishosting. Not long after I moved, development of a revamped architecture was begun. Next is what they are calling the new program hosted on their servers (I think). Development has been fast and furious since. I'm currently on version 4.7.3. I don't know what licenses are available. I think that all changed when the company was sold. Though, I don't have direct access to the server techs, working through the Avactis support has never been a problem. What is especially nice is that there is no point of fingers. Whether it's a program issue, such as caching, or a server issue, such as upgrading to the latest stable php version, it's handled very quickly. If I were still developing for others, I would investigate the cart and new company. I like that development is robust...important in today's climate of cyberattacks. I like that the cart is easily configured and modified for individual customer needs, but it is pretty much a 1 time undertaking. Maintenance, updating, and changing the look and feel is something that endusers can feel comfortable doing...with some consulting from the experts, of course.