What happens when your domain expires, and how to get it back.

What happens after the expiry date

For .com, .net, .org and the other generic endings, ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy sets the minimum, and registrars add their own terms on top. The sequence:

• Before expiry: the registrar must send at least two reminders, about a month and about a week before the date.
• Just after expiry: if the domain is neither renewed nor deleted within five days, the registrar must send another notice with instructions for renewing.
• The switch-off: for at least the last eight days in which you can still renew, the registrar must interrupt the domain's DNS, so the website and email stop working. Any page it shows instead must say clearly that the domain has expired and how to renew it.
• The grace period: registrars may let you renew for up to 45 days after expiry, sometimes for an extra fee. ICANN warns that a registrar may also auction the name during this time, depending on its terms.
• The redemption period: once the registrar deletes the domain, the registry holds it for 30 days. Only you, through the same registrar, can restore it, and a restore fee may apply.
• Pending delete: five more days in which nothing can be changed. Then the name is released, and anyone can register it.

Country endings follow their own rules, set out further down. The advice for every ending is the same: act on the first day, not the last.

What stops, and how you find out

The website and email both depend on the domain's DNS, so they stop together when the registrar switches it off, give or take the hours that DNS answers are cached around the internet. People usually notice in this order:

• The website shows the registrar's expiry page or fails to load. Someone at the business notices, or a customer mentions it.
• Emails to you stop arriving. Mail sent while the domain is off may bounce back to the sender or be lost, depending on how the registrar has parked it.
• Emails you send start to fail or land in spam, because the records that prove your mail is genuine have stopped answering too.
• Everything tied to the domain follows: booking confirmations, invoices from your accounting software and password resets for accounts registered with your business address.

The website files are not deleted. They stay with your host for as long as the hosting is paid. What has gone is the address that points at them.

Find out which stage it is in

Look the domain up on ICANN Lookup. It shows the registrar, the expiry date and status codes that tell you where you are:

• autoRenewPeriod: the registry has renewed it automatically and your registrar is deciding what to do with it. Renew now.
• clientHold or serverHold: the domain is switched off in DNS, often because of non-payment.
• redemptionPeriod: the registrar has deleted it, and it can still be restored within 30 days.
• pendingDelete: it is about to be released. All you can do is try to register it again when it drops.
• No result, or a different registrar and a new expiry date: someone else has it.

Then find the account. If you do not know which login renews it, search your email for the registrar's name and your card statements for its charges. If a past designer registered it in their own account, start with how to get your website back from a web designer.

Just expired: renew it now

If the domain is still at your registrar, sign in and renew it. Some registrars charge the normal price in the first days after expiry and a late fee after that, and their terms say which. ICANN's rules make the registrar restore the DNS as soon as you renew, or as soon as is commercially reasonable.

Then check that your records came back, because some registrars point an expired domain at a parking page:

• Open the website with and without www, on mobile data.
• Send an email to each main address from a Gmail account, and reply.
• Send a test enquiry through the website form.
• Compare the nameservers and DNS records with your last copy of them.

Turn on auto-renew, check that the card on file has not expired, and renew for more than one year while you are there.

A lapsed domain, hour by hour

Say a two-van electrician's website goes blank on a Monday morning, and by lunchtime a customer says an email bounced. The order that gets it back fastest:

• 9.15: look the domain up on ICANN Lookup. It shows the registrar, an expiry date last week and a hold status, so it can still be renewed.
• 9.30: find the account. The renewal emails went to a former office manager's address, so the owner uses the registrar's account recovery with the business's details.
• 10.00: renew for three years, with auto-renew on and the business's new card on file.
• 10.30: check the website, send test emails both ways and send a test form enquiry. One DNS record is missing, so the owner adds it back from the last copy of the records.
• 11.00: change the contact email on the registrar account to one the owner reads, and put the next expiry date in the shared calendar.
• Afternoon: reply to the customer whose email bounced, and go through the enquiries that arrived that morning.

A couple of hours of work, because the domain was caught in its first week. In the redemption period the same morning would also have meant a restore fee, and after it, possibly the end of the name.

Deleted but restorable: the redemption period

If the lookup shows redemptionPeriod, you have 30 days, and only your current registrar can restore the domain. Contact them the same day and ask for a restore. Expect a restore fee on top of the renewal. Registrars of generic domains must publish it, so you can check it on their site. Pay it: losing the name costs more.

The domain cannot move to another registrar during this period. It has to be restored where it is first, and only then can you transfer the domain if you want to.

If your registrar will not restore it, or you paid and it was not restored, ICANN has a complaint form for renewal problems. It covers missing reminders, failed restores and renewed domains that still do not work.

When someone else has registered it

After the pending delete days, the name goes to whoever registers it first. Some services watch for released names and register them the moment they drop, so a name that still gets visits and email can go quickly. If that has happened:

• Look up the new registrar. The owner's details are usually hidden, but registrars usually offer a contact form or a relay address for the registrant.
• If the name is listed for sale, decide what it is worth to you and pay through an escrow service or a registrar's marketplace, so the money and the domain change hands together.
• If the new owner uses it to pass themselves off as you, or registered it to sell back to you, and you hold a trademark, the UDRP is a dispute process for generic endings. You have to show that the name is identical or confusingly similar to your mark, that they have no legitimate interest in it, and that they registered and use it in bad faith. The remedy is transfer or cancellation. Ask an adviser first.
• Country endings have their own dispute processes, run by or for their registries.
• If none of that works, a new domain is the last resort. Choose it with care, plan the move like a website redesign and update every printed item, listing and login.

Whoever owns your old domain can receive email sent to your old addresses, including password resets. Change the login email on every account that used an address on it, starting with your bank, your email service, your registrar and Google, before you do anything else.

Country endings work differently

ICANN's policy covers generic endings only. Three examples of how registries handle expiry:

• .uk: Nominet suspends the domain 30 days after expiry, so the website and email stop then. It can be renewed until 90 days after expiry, and it is released 95 days after expiry.
• .eu: a .eu that is not renewed goes into quarantine for 40 days, during which the holder can reactivate it through their registrar. After that it is released to anyone.
• .de: a deleted .de goes into a 30-day redemption period in which only the last holder, or someone they name, can register it again. DENIC charges nothing for the period itself, but the registrar may charge for the work.

For any other ending, the registry's website explains its own timetable. Your registrar's terms can be stricter than the registry's, so read both.

Fake renewal notices

Expiry worries make good bait. The common kinds:

• Emails that look like they come from ICANN, offering to renew your domain. ICANN has warned about these, and it does not collect fees from domain owners: you pay your registrar.
• Emails that look like your registrar, with a link to a login page. They are after your password, and with it your domain and your email.
• Letters or emails styled as an invoice, from a company that is not your registrar. Paying one can sign you up to move the domain to them.
• Messages saying a company abroad wants to register your name in its country and asking whether you agree. You do not need to agree to anything, and you do not need those domains.

One rule beats all of them: never renew through a link or a letter. Look your domain up on ICANN Lookup to see which registrar really holds it and when it expires, then sign in to that registrar yourself. If an email uses ICANN's name, ICANN asks you to report it to its compliance team.

Stop it happening again

Domains lapse for small reasons: an expired card, reminders going to someone who left, or a renewal everyone assumed someone else had done. Close each gap:

• Turn on auto-renew and keep the card on file current. When the business's card is replaced, update it at the registrar the same day.
• Renew for several years at a time. Generic domains can be registered for up to ten years.
• Make the contact email an address that does not depend on the domain itself and that more than one person reads. After expiry, an address on the same domain cannot receive the warnings.
• Put the expiry date in a shared calendar a month ahead, even with auto-renew on.
• Keep the registrar account in the business's name, with a second person who can sign in.
• If a supplier renews it for you, ask for the renewal date in writing and check it yourself on ICANN Lookup once a year.

On our monthly plans we check that the site is up and fix it if not, and the domain, site and accounts stay in your name, as the prices page says. Whoever looks after your site, know the renewal date yourself.

Once it is back

• Check every DNS record against your last copy, especially MX, SPF and DKIM.
• Test email in both directions, and the website form.
• Look in Search Console for pages Google could not reach while the domain was off, and ask it to recheck the main ones.
• Check that your booking tool, payment provider and other services send their emails correctly again.
• If customers' emails bounced, send the people you know about a short note: "Our email was down for a few days. If you wrote to us and had no reply, please send it again."

A restaurant that takes bookings by email, or a hotel whose confirmations come from its own domain, should also go through the bookings made while the domain was off, because some guests will think they booked and never heard back. If your mail lands in spam after the restore, why your business emails go to spam shows how to check the records.