Domain Name Expirations: What You Need to Know
Website domain names are the primary address a person or company maintains to establish and distinguish themselves on the World Wide Web. This name acts as a billboard, alerting potential customers to your identity, your location, and the goods or services that you offer. A website without a domain name cannot be found because it is not only the storefront sign, but also the storefront.
So, do domain names expire? Choosing the perfect domain name for your business can be a long process that costs you a great deal of time, effort, and money. But once it becomes yours, it is yours until it expires. So, imagine this process: you get your domain name and link it to your website. Then you spend months, if not years, building your brand around it. If successful, people start associating your product or service with the domain name. This area is now an integral part of your business and the way people find you online. After that, you log in one morning and receive a message saying that your domain has expired. All of the hard work, time and money invested in building your brand around your domain name and domain name extension is not associated with your brand anymore. At this point, your expired domain name is up for sale and available to the highest bidder.
One of the scariest things that can happen to any website owner is discovering that their domain name has expired. This business tragedy can happen more than you think, and it can be quite disabling. Not only does someone else inherit all of the goodwill instilled and tied to this branding, but now you need to rebuild and rebrand from the ground up. While there is something to be said for flexibility, it is best that you save yourself the worry and stress about losing your domain name because it expires. Below, we will discuss the reasons that may cause your domain to expire without your knowledge and then what happens when the domain expires.
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Reasons for domain names expiring
It's very easy to overlook the fact that domain name registration is temporary. Even though the domain name at that time is yours and may be for years, there is still a chance that the domain will get out of your control. There are several ways this can happen:
- Renewal reminder notifications: If you turn off renewal reminder notifications, you may be ready for disaster. While email messages and automatic notifications can clutter your inbox, they can also save your life. Even if you manually turn off renewal reminders (for whatever reason), Atakdomain.com will start sending email reminders to your listed email address within approximately 30 days of the domain expiration date. We guarantee that you will receive a minimum of two reminders prior to expiration date and one within five days after expiration. So, pay attention to your inbox, or change your settings to mark the words "expired" or "renew" to ensure you don't miss these important reminders.
- Auto-renew is not enabled: By going through your account information and switching your domain name to auto-renew, you are protecting yourself from the possibility of forgetting. When auto-renew is in use, it will automatically renew your domain name before the expiration date, generally one day before expiration. This feature will continue to be turned on and automatically renewed unless changes are made or if there are issues with your billing information.
- Old billing information: When you lose a credit card, or it naturally expires, it is easy to forget all the sites, services, and subscriptions that you linked to that specific card and pre-set them for automatic billing. In cases like this, the last thing on your mind would be to update your billing information on the domain you rented years ago and then set it to auto-renew. If you lose or get a new credit card, be sure to check your bills and see what you'll need to update with the appropriate billing. With Atakdomain.com, if auto-renew has a billing issue, we'll try multiple times to send alerts and reminders that the payment was not successful and that invoices must be updated to prevent the domain name from expiring. You may need to renew your domain manually if it is less than 15 days before expiration.
- Multiple domain providers: The more you publish your domains, the easier it becomes to forget or confuse them, especially if you have invested in a large number of different website domain names. It's also possible that there was a domain name creeping through the gaps and expiring because it was scattered across registrars. At Atakdomain.com, we suggest that you consolidate your domains into one service. By doing this, all of your domains are centralized in one place and linked to one billing account. It greatly simplifies making payments, checking domain name expiration dates, or making adjustments from a central platform.
- Contact email related to domain: At Atakdomain.com, we encourage you to start using your new domain email address as your primary email source. This is cool, except when it comes to domain expiration. If you select your domain email in order to manage the associated domain name, you create a dilemma that if you forget the account password, you will not be able to enter the email to retrieve the forgotten password. Moreover, if the expiration date has passed, you will not be able to use this email during the renewal grace period. For this reason, you should consider adding a secondary email address to your account.
- Expired corporate email address: A problem we often face with the process behind domain name registration is that a person will use a work or school email account that requires him or her to continue actively participating with those organizations in order to gain access to an email account, such as Business mail or club email. Therefore, if someone registers a domain name with such an email and then leaves school or quits their job, they will no longer have access to the email address associated with the domain name. In many cases, it will be impossible to re-grant access to this email due to security issues or to delete the account as a whole. While it may still be possible to renew your domain without logging into the account, it makes life more difficult for you and increases the likelihood of missing a domain expiration alert.
- Wait a long time to renew: Even though they may have received many alerts or reminders to renew, some people simply wait a long time to renew their range and get past the point where anything can be done to correct the situation. On the day of expiration, make sure that you lose ownership of the domain name.
What happens when a domain expires?
There are a variety of steps that will occur during a domain name expiration:
- Step 1:
Domain Expiration Alerts: Before domain name registration expires, Atakdomain.com will begin sending you reminders via email. At least two alerts will be sent before expiration, and one alert within five days of expiration. - Step 2:
Domain name registration expiration: If the domain is not renewed by the owner before the expiration date, then the domain's status will be changed to the so-called renewal grace period. Under this situation, you can still renew the domain name without incurring additional fees for a thirty-day grace period. Early one day after expiration, your domain name will be deactivated and replaced with a wait page indicating that the domain name has expired, and other services that you have associated with the domain name may not work. - Step 3:
Renewal Grace Period Expires: Once this period expires, the status of the expired domain name changes to 'Registrar Suspension'. During this 30-day period, the original domain owner may pay a redemption fee in addition to the renewal fee. - Step 4:
Registrar Auction: While the registrant is in existence, the registrant attempts to sell the domain name in an options auction to the highest bidder. If the sale is indeed made, the highest bidder will have to wait the full 30 days for registrant ownership before acquiring the domain name. If the original owner decides to renew during this period, the bidding fee will be refunded and the original owner retains control of the domain name. If the original owner does not renew the domain name and the 30 days have passed, the auction winner is transferred to the domain name controller. - Step 4b:
Closing Sale: If a domain name is not purchased at auction or renewed by the original owner, the registrar will often list it as a final sale, as it can be purchased at a cheaper "Buy It Now" price, higher than the domain name registration fee. If the name was purchased during the clearance sale, the retention period of the registrant remains in effect, giving the original owner the opportunity to regain ownership within thirty days. - Step 5:
Redemption period: After the registrant's reservation has expired, and if the domain name is not purchased or renewed, the domain name is released back to the registry. Upon issuance, the domain name is placed under the redemption period status, which means that it cannot be changed or deleted for a period of thirty days. During this time period, the original owner can pay a restoration fee, in addition to a renewal fee in order to restore the website and email. - Step 6:
End of registration grace period: If this grace period expires without renewing the domain name, then it will be placed under a status of pending deletion. If no action to restore takes place on the part of the original owner, registry, or registrant, the domain will eventually be deleted. This deletion will then release that domain name again for public registration.
Keep your domain name and website up and running
Domain names play a crucial role in the virtual market. Choosing a creative domain name is an important and time-consuming aspect of giving your business the tools it needs to thrive. Such an investment is essential to success, which is why domain name expiration can be frustrating and disruptive to business, and it only gets worse if a competitor manages to snatch your domain name. All of the time and effort spent building that branding and linking it to the domain name could be all to waste.
The best way to prevent this problem is to do everything in your power to prevent such a disaster from occurring in the first place. This includes regularly checking your email and spam folders for renewal notifications, setting personal expiration alerts, making sure your domain's billing information is always up-to-date, and setting your account to auto-renew. If you take the right steps, you can save yourself a serious headache, so don't be anything less than proactive when it comes to the potential for one of your domain names to expire. With the right infrastructure in place, this shouldn't be a problem!
