Why Domains Expire (And What Happens When They Do)
The timeline of domain expiration, grace periods, and how to avoid losing your domain to someone else.
Your domain doesn't vanish at midnight on the expiry date. There's a process — and understanding it can save you from a very expensive mistake.
The Expiration Timeline
When a domain "expires," it enters a series of stages before it's actually available to someone else.
Expiry Date
Your registrar stops resolving the domain. Your website and email go down. Most registrars add a "this domain has expired" parking page.
Grace Period (0-45 days)
You can still renew at the normal price. The length varies by registrar — some give you 30 days, others just a few. Don't count on this.
Redemption Period (30 days)
The domain is deleted from the registry but held in limbo. You can get it back, but registrars charge a redemption fee — often $100-200 on top of renewal.
Pending Delete (5 days)
The domain is queued for release. No recovery possible. Domain squatters have scripts watching for this exact moment.
Released
Anyone can register it. If it had traffic or backlinks, expect it to be snapped up within seconds.
Why Domains Actually Expire
Nobody intends to let a domain expire. It happens because:
Payment failures. The card on file expired. The PayPal account had insufficient funds. The invoice went to an email nobody checks.
Ownership confusion. The domain is registered under a former employee's account. Or a contractor set it up years ago. Or it's in a personal account that should be corporate.
Too many registrars. Domains spread across GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Google — each with different renewal dates and notification settings.
Notification fatigue. Registrars send renewal emails starting 90 days out. By day 60, you've trained yourself to ignore them.
The real cost isn't the renewal fee
Losing a domain means losing your email, your SEO rankings, your customer trust, and potentially your brand — if someone else registers it first.
How to Protect Yourself
Enable auto-renewal. Yes, obvious. But verify it's actually on, and that the payment method is current.
Use a single registrar. Consolidate where you can. Fewer logins, fewer renewal schedules.
Set calendar reminders. Don't rely on registrar emails alone. Put expiry dates in your calendar 60, 30, and 7 days out.
Monitor externally. Your registrar wants you to renew. An external monitor tells you the truth about what's actually in the WHOIS database.
Never lose a domain to missed renewal
Domain Expiry Watcher monitors your domains and alerts you before they expire — regardless of which registrar you use.
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