Your domain expired. Here’s how to get it back, depending on how long it’s been

First: how long has it been?

An expired domain is one of those problems that is cheap on day one and expensive on day sixty. So before anything else, look the domain up on ICANN’s free lookup tool (lookup.icann.org) and note two things: the expiry date and the status codes. Statuses like “redemptionPeriod” or “pendingDelete” tell you exactly which stage you’re in.

If it expired in the last few weeks, log into the account at the registrar where you bought it and renew it. That’s usually all it takes, and the site and email come back within hours. If you can’t log in, or you don’t know which registrar it’s with, that is the real problem, and I’ll come back to it.

What happens after a domain expires

Timelines vary by registrar and by domain ending (country domains such as .co.uk or .de have their own rules), but for .com, .net and similar endings the pattern looks like this.

1. Expiry day. The registration lapses. Under ICANN’s rules the registrar should already have sent you at least two reminders, about a month and about a week before. Some registrars stop the domain’s DNS straight away or point it at a parking page, so the website and email stop working.
2. The renewal window after expiry. The registrar keeps the name for a while and lets you renew. ICANN requires it to keep renewal open through the period when DNS is interrupted, and if it holds the name eight or more days, to interrupt DNS for at least the last eight consecutive days, so you notice. How long this window lasts is the registrar’s choice; check its terms. Some registrars also list expired names at auction during this time, which is a good reason not to wait.
3. Redemption grace period. If nobody renews, the registrar deletes the name and the registry holds it for 30 days. You can still restore it, through the same registrar only, for a redemption fee that is higher than a normal renewal. ICANN requires registrars to publish what they charge.
4. Pending delete. A short final stage (ICANN describes it as five calendar days) when the name can’t be restored by anyone.
5. Released. The name becomes available to anyone. Valuable or long-established names are often picked up within seconds by automated “drop-catching” services, because an old business domain still gets traffic and email.

How to get it back at each stage

In the renewal window: log in and renew. If the card on file expired (a common cause), update it. If you can’t log in, use the registrar’s account recovery, and if the account is in someone else’s name, call the registrar’s support and ask what proof they need. Do it today, not next week.

In redemption: contact the same registrar and ask to restore the domain. Expect to pay the redemption fee plus a year’s renewal. It’s annoying, but it is almost always cheaper than the alternative, which is losing a domain your customers, Google and every printed brochure know.

Already registered by someone else: the options are worse. You can contact the new owner and offer to buy it, which can get expensive if they know what it’s worth. You can place a backorder in case it lapses again. If you hold a trademark and the new owner is using the name in bad faith, ICANN’s dispute policy (UDRP) may help, but that is a question for a lawyer, and this is general information only.

If you’re in the middle of this now and want someone to look at it with you, book a free 30-minute call and we’ll tell you what we’d do first, no obligation.

If your old web designer holds the domain

This is the most common version of the problem, and it’s usually fixable without any drama, provided you start before the domain expires. Here’s the order I’d follow.

1. Open a registrar account in the company’s name, with a shared role address, before you contact anyone.
2. Ask the designer, politely and in writing, to unlock the domain and send you the transfer authorization code (sometimes called the EPP code).
3. Start the transfer at your new registrar using that code, and approve any confirmation email that arrives. Transfers normally add a year to the registration, so you also buy yourself time.
4. Before the transfer completes, copy down the DNS records (website, email, anything else) so nothing breaks when the domain arrives in its new home.

If the designer has vanished, the registrar will have a process for proving you’re the rightful registrant, usually with company documents. It is slower, and it is the whole argument for doing this before the domain is anywhere near its expiry date.

My opinion: the domain should be in an account the company owns

In my experience, domains rarely expire because someone decided not to pay. They expire because the reminders went to someone who isn’t there any more. Usually a web designer registered the domain years ago in their own account, or someone registered it with a personal Gmail address, and the renewal reminders go to an inbox nobody reads.

A local business we helped found this out on a Monday morning, when its website went offline. The owner believed the hosting had failed. It hadn’t. The hosting account was still running, and our DNS checks showed the domain no longer resolved correctly: it had expired, because the renewal notices had been going to a former marketing contractor’s email address. We worked through the registrar’s recovery process with the owner to regain access, renewed the domain, restored the DNS records, and then checked the website, the email (MX) records and the TLS certificate. We deliberately did not blindly replace the whole DNS zone, because the same domain handled the business’s email. Once everything was working, we moved the domain into a registrar account the company controls, with two authorized administrators, renewal alerts and a documented billing method. There was nothing wrong with the website. The failure was in who looked after the domain.

So here’s what I’d ask every business to do. It takes about half an hour:

• Put every domain in a registrar account in the company’s name, not the web designer’s or a former employee’s. If it’s elsewhere, ask for a transfer now rather than in the week it lapses.
• Use a shared role address for the account and the domain contact (domains@ or it@), which more than one person reads.
• Give two people in the company admin access.
• Turn on auto-renew, and renew for several years at a time. A .com is cheap; losing one isn’t.
• Keep a card on file that won’t expire soon, and put a calendar reminder 60 days before each expiry date, just in case.
• Turn on the registrar lock (it shows as clientTransferProhibited) so the domain can’t be transferred away without your say-so.

Our piece on who owns your website covers getting the domain, hosting and site logins into the company’s name. When we build sites through our web design work, the domain stays in your account, and you keep everything if you ever leave.

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