A domain that passes its expiry date isn't lost straight away. For generic domains like .com, ICANN rules give you weeks to renew, though it gets more expensive as time passes. Act today: your website and email stop working long before the domain is released.
Renew it now
Log in to your registrar and renew. If you can't get in (the account belonged to someone who left, or the card expired), contact the registrar's support with proof you own the business. Renewing in the first days after expiry usually costs the normal renewal price.
The timeline for .com and other generic domains
| When | What happens | Can you renew? |
|---|---|---|
| ~30 and ~7 days before | the registrar must email a reminder | yes, normal price |
| Expiry day | the domain stays registered | yes |
| Within 5 days after | the registrar must send another notice | yes |
| Up to 45 days after | auto-renew grace period at the registry; the registrar may delete earlier | yes, usually normal price |
| After deletion: 30 days | redemption grace period: the domain is out of DNS | only by restoring, for a fee |
| A few days more | pending delete | no |
| Then | released: anyone can register it | only by registering it again, if nobody else does |
ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy guarantees at least 8 days after expiry in which you can renew. How long each registrar waits before deleting varies, so check its renewal and restore fees, which it must publish.
What stops working, and when
Under the same policy, the registrar must interrupt DNS at some point after expiry: often by pointing the domain at a parking page that says it expired and how to renew. From that moment:
- The website shows the parking page or nothing.
- Incoming email fails: other servers can't find your mail servers. They retry for a few days, then bounce messages back to the senders.
- Outgoing email looks forged: receivers can't find your SPF, DKIM or DMARC records, so your messages land in spam or are rejected.
- Logins that send codes to addresses at the domain stop arriving, including the registrar's own password reset if it uses that address.
After you renew, it can take a few hours for DNS to work everywhere again.
Restoring from redemption
During the 30-day redemption grace period only the registrar that deleted the domain can restore it. The restore fee is set by the registry plus the registrar's own charge, and is often many times the yearly price.
Country domains work differently
Each country registry sets its own rules. For example, a .uk domain is suspended 30 days after expiry and cancelled about 90 days after. A deleted .de domain enters DENIC's own 30-day redemption period. Check your registry's policy rather than assuming the .com timeline.
Don't let it happen again
- Turn on auto-renew and keep a valid card on the account.
- Use a shared mailbox for the registrar account and renewal notices, at an address that doesn't depend on the domain itself.
- Renew for several years for the domains the business runs on.
- Monitor expiry dates independently. Reminder emails go to whoever registered the domain years ago; monitoring goes to the team.
Check your domain
The domain expiry checker shows when your domain expires, its registrar and its status. Nameward's monitoring alerts you weeks before expiry, and again if a domain is about to lapse.
Sources
- ICANN: Expired Registration Recovery Policy
- ICANN: EPP status codes (redemption period)
- ICANN: .com registry functional specifications (auto-renew grace period)
- Namecheap: why is the redemption fee so high?
- Nominet: what if I don't renew my domain?
- DENIC: redemption grace period
- RFC 5321: SMTP retry behaviour