How a domain expires, and how not to lose yours

A domain doesn't just run your website. Your email, your login pages, your API, the links in every invoice and newsletter you've ever sent - all of it hangs off one registration that has to be renewed on time, every time. When it isn't, all of it stops at once.

It happens to large companies too. In July 2017, Marketo's main domain lapsed because an automatic renewal failed; its customers' forms, emails and tracking links broke, and service came back only after a customer noticed and paid the renewal himself.

What happens after the expiry date

For the common top-level domains - .com, .net, .org and the hundreds of newer ones - ICANN's rules set the outline. Country domains such as .uk or .in follow their own registries' rules, which differ.

1. Expiry. The registration runs out. Many registrars stop the domain resolving straight away, or point it at a parking page, so your site and email go dark from the first day.
2. Auto-renew grace period. Most registrars give you a window - anywhere from 1 to 45 days, depending on the registrar - to renew at the normal price. Some charge extra, and some don't offer one at all.
3. Redemption grace period. If the registrar deletes the registration, the registry holds it for 30 days. The domain doesn't resolve and can't be transferred, but you can still get it back - through your registrar, usually for a much higher restore fee.
4. Pending delete. A short final stage, typically a few days, when nothing can be done.
5. Released. The name is available to anyone. Valuable or well-used names are often caught within seconds by services that watch for exactly this moment.

So there's usually time to rescue a lapsed domain. But the outage starts on day one, and each stage costs more and is in fewer people's hands than the last.

Why reminders and auto-renew still fail

ICANN requires registrars to send at least two reminders before a domain expires - about a month before and about a week before - and one more shortly after. Add auto-renew, and it sounds impossible to forget. Domains lapse anyway, usually for one of these reasons:

• The card expired. Auto-renew is on, the payment fails, and the email saying so goes to the next item on this list.
• The reminders go to the wrong person. The registrant email belongs to someone who left, an agency you stopped working with, or a mailbox nobody reads.
• The reminders are filtered. Renewal notices look exactly like the phishing emails that imitate them, and spam filters treat them that way.
• The domain is in the wrong account. Bought years ago on a personal card, in a registrar account only one person can log in to.
• Nobody knows the domain exists. The second domain for the old product, the country version, the one only the mail server uses.

Every one of these is a problem of visibility: the information exists, but it never reaches someone who'll act on it.

What else changes on a domain

Expiry isn't the only thing worth knowing about. A domain's registration also records:

• Its status codes, such as clientTransferProhibited - the lock that stops it being moved to another registrar without you. If a lock you set disappears, you want to know.
• Its registrar. A domain that moves to a different registrar without you asking is either a mistake or a hijacking, and both need acting on quickly.
• Its renewal. When a renewal goes through, the expiry date moves. If it doesn't move when you expected it to, the renewal didn't happen.

All of this is public. Since January 2025 the common top-level domains publish it through RDAP, the structured successor to WHOIS, which ICANN no longer requires registries to run.

What to watch

• Every domain you own, not just the main one. Make a list - it's usually longer than anyone expects.
• The expiry date the registry holds, not the one in your registrar's dashboard or a spreadsheet. The registry's is the one that counts.
• Reminders that reach a team, not one person's inbox - and early enough to fix a payment or an account problem, which can take days.
• Changes in status and registrar, so a dropped lock or an unexpected transfer is caught the day it happens.

How Mon watches domains

Mon's domain expiration monitoring reads each domain's registration from the registry every day. It reminds you before expiry - you choose how far ahead, up to 90 days - by email, in Slack, to your own webhook, or by SMS on paid plans, so the reminder reaches the people who'll act on it. When the domain is renewed, it tells you it's back in the clear, so you know the renewal really went through. And it emails you when a domain's status changes or it moves to another registrar.

Add your domains by pasting a list, or on Enterprise plans import them straight from Namecheap, Amazon Route 53 or Azure DNS. It's free for up to 5 domains. Start for free, or look a domain up now without signing up.