What to do when your domain is about to expire

Your domain name, such as yourbusiness.com, is rented, not owned. You pay a registrar for a set period, typically one to ten years, and it has to be renewed before that runs out (ICANN: renewals and expiration). Your registrar is often a different company from your web host, which is how renewals get missed.

Domain registration expires soon, or has expired

Serious Shown in the checker's Email & domain tab as “Domain registration expires in N days” or “Domain registration has expired”.

The checker reads your domain's public registration record over RDAP (the Registration Data Access Protocol, the modern replacement for WHOIS). It flags the domain when the expiry date is 60 days away or less, or already past. Some country-code registries don't publish an expiry date, and then the checker can't flag anything. Your registrar's own dashboard is always the final word.

Why it matters

A domain carries both your website and your email. When the registration lapses, both stop working, usually within days. For generic domains (.com, .net, .org and the like), ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy requires the registrar to interrupt the domain's DNS at some point before it deletes the name. In practice the site is replaced by a parking or renewal page, and email to your address stops arriving (ICANN: ERRP).

If nobody renews it, ICANN describes what follows. The name enters a 30-day Redemption Grace Period, during which it can still be restored, usually for an extra restore fee. Then comes 5 days of pending deletion. After that it is released to whoever registers it first. Anyone can register it then, including services that watch for expiring names with existing traffic, and buying it back can cost far more than the renewal ever did.

The warnings are easy to miss. Registrars must send reminders about one month and one week before expiry and again within five days after (ICANN FAQ). Those go to the account's contact email, which is often a former employee, the person who built the site, or an address on the very domain that just stopped receiving mail.

How to fix it

1. Find your registrar. Search your domain at ICANN Lookup; the result names the registrar. Then find the account, often by searching your email for the registrar's name or “domain renewal”.
2. Get into the account. If someone else registered the domain for you, such as a past web designer or a staff member who left, ask them to renew it now. Separately, ask them to move it into an account the business controls; registrars have an account-change (“push”) or transfer process for this.
3. Renew. Renewing for two to five years removes the risk for a while. Renewal prices are set by the registrar and often rise after the first year, so check the price before you pay.
4. Turn on auto-renew, and check the card on file isn't due to expire. Auto-renew fails silently when a card is declined.
5. Fix the contact details. Set the account and registrant email to an address on a different domain (a personal Gmail works) and add a second person if the registrar allows it.
6. Put the expiry date in your calendar, as ICANN recommends, with a reminder a few weeks ahead in case auto-renew fails.

If it has already expired

Call or message the registrar straight away and ask what renewal or restore options remain (ICANN: renewing an expired domain). Fees vary by registrar: renewing soon after expiry may cost the normal price or add a late fee, and during the Redemption Grace Period a restore fee usually applies. Once the name is released, it's first-come, first-served. Country-code domains (.us, .co, .uk and others) follow their own registry's rules, so the timings above may not apply; ask your registrar.

Watch for fake renewal notices

Letters and emails from companies that aren't your registrar, offering to “renew” your domain at a high price, are often attempts to get you to transfer it. Renew only through the registrar you found in step 1.

How to check it's fixed

Your registrar's dashboard should show the new expiry date and auto-renew switched on. ICANN Lookup usually shows the new date within minutes, sometimes a day later. Run the website checker again: the finding disappears once the date is more than 60 days out, and the new renewal date appears under its facts.

While you're in the registrar account, check your email records too: the SPF and DMARC guide covers the DNS settings that keep your mail out of spam folders.

Sources

• ICANN: FAQs for registrants on domain name renewals and expiration
• ICANN: Expired Registration Recovery Policy (ERRP)
• ICANN: about renewing an expired domain
• ICANN Lookup (find your registrar and expiry date)
• ICANN: RDAP, the successor to WHOIS

Common questions

Check the rest of your setup. The website checker reads your domain's registration, email records, certificate and site in one pass. If you'd like someone to keep an eye on renewals for you, it's part of our ongoing website management.