Domain expired? What happens next and how long you have

When it breaks 5 min read

What actually happens after a domain registration lapses, how long you have to get the name back, and why your email stopped at the same moment.

Your website was there last week. This morning the address returns nothing, and an email you were expecting has not arrived. Then somebody mentions they got a bounce message when they wrote to you.

Both of those symptoms come from one thing, and it is a payment rather than a fault.

What you were actually renting

You never bought your domain name. Nobody does. A domain is rented from a registrar in blocks of years, and the rent buys one thing: the right to say where that name points.

While the rent is paid, the name points at your website and at your mail. When it lapses, the name stops pointing anywhere at all. The website files are untouched, sitting where they always were. The address that led people to them has gone quiet.

That is why this looks so much worse than it is. Nothing was deleted.

Why the email died too

If your email address ends in the same name as your website, both run off the same registration.

The moment the name lapses, mail sent to you has nowhere to go, and the sender gets a bounce. Inquiries, invoices, a supplier confirming Friday, all of it. Worse, the bounce is silent from your side. You do not see what did not arrive.

If you can, get a message out through whatever still works: your cell phone, your Google listing, a personal address. Tell people to call you. That takes five minutes and stops the quiet losses while you sort the rest.

The three stages after the expiry date

Registrars do not delete a name the day it lapses. There is a sequence, and each stage is harder and dearer than the one before.

Stage one, the grace period. The name has stopped working but is still yours, and renewing costs what a renewal normally costs. This period varies by registrar, often a few weeks. This is the stage you want to be in.

Stage two, redemption. For most common endings this runs around thirty days. The name is still recoverable but the registrar charges a redemption fee on top of the renewal, and it is considerably more than the ordinary price. They will tell you the figure before you pay it.

Stage three, released. The name goes back on the open market and anybody may register it. At that point it is no longer a payment problem, and there is no process that gets it back for you as of right.

So the honest answer to how long you have is: probably weeks, possibly not many, and every day you wait may move you into a dearer stage. Call the registrar today rather than on the weekend.

Find your registrar without guessing

You cannot renew until you know who to renew with, and plenty of owners do not know. That is not carelessness. It was bought once, years ago, possibly by somebody else.

Start with a public domain lookup. Search for an ICANN lookup or a WHOIS lookup, type your domain in, and read the result. Even where the owner's details are hidden for privacy, the registrar's name is nearly always shown, along with the expiry date in plain text. That one line tells you who holds the name and how far past the date you are.

If the registrar looks unfamiliar, search your email for its name, and search your card statements for it too. The account exists. Somebody set it up.

Why the warning emails never reached you

Registrars do send reminders. They send them to whatever address was typed into the account when it was created, and that is where this usually falls apart.

It may be an old address you stopped using. It may be an address at the domain itself, which stops working the moment the name does, so the final reminders bounce. It may belong to the person who built the site and has since moved on. In every one of those cases the reminders went out and you were never going to see them.

While you are in the account, change the contact address to one you read every day, and one that does not end in the domain you are trying to protect.

Renewing it, and what to ask for while you are there

If you can log in, renew and check the site comes back. It will not be instant. The name has to propagate across the internet's directories, which can take anywhere from minutes to a day, so do not panic in the first hour.

If you cannot log in, call the registrar. Have your invoice, the card that paid it, and the email address on the account. Expect them to verify who you are, and expect that to be tedious rather than quick.

Before you hang up, do three things. Turn on auto-renew. Put a card on file that is not about to expire, because a replaced card silently breaks auto-renew. And renew for more than one year if you can, because it removes the problem for a while.

A short checklist

• Look the domain up on a WHOIS or ICANN lookup and read the expiry date
• Note which registrar holds it and stop guessing
• Call or log in today rather than on the weekend, because the stages get dearer
• Get word to customers by phone and Google listing while email is down
• Change the account's contact address to one that does not end in your own domain
• Turn on auto-renew and check the card on file has not been replaced
• Renew for several years at once if the budget allows
• Put the new expiry date in your own calendar, not just theirs

Questions people ask

How long after my domain expires can I still get it back

Usually a grace period of some weeks, then a redemption window of roughly thirty days for common endings, after which it can be released to anyone. Your registrar can tell you exactly which stage you are in.

Why is my email down when it is my website that expired

Because both run on the same name. The registration is what points mail at your inbox, so when it lapses your mail has nowhere to arrive.

Does an expired domain mean I have lost my website

No. The pages, images and text are still with your hosting company, untouched. Only the address stopped working.

Can somebody else register my domain now

Only once it has been fully released, which happens at the end of the sequence rather than on the expiry date. This is the reason not to leave it two weeks.

Will my Google ranking come back when the domain does

The pages return as they were. What Google does after an outage is not something anyone outside Google can promise you, but a few days is a very different situation from a few months.

How do I stop this happening again

Auto-renew, a current card, and a contact email address that does not end in the domain itself.