What to do if your domain has expired: how to avoid losing your company's website

A domain and hosting are not the same thing

Before moving on to the recovery process, it is worth distinguishing between two concepts that are often confused. A domain is your website’s address on the internet, whilst hosting is the place where its files are physically stored. These are different services with separate expiry dates and payment arrangements. If your domain expires, users will not be able to find your website at its address. If your hosting subscription lapses, however, your website will also stop working, even if the domain remains active. This is precisely why it is important to keep track of the renewal dates for both services.

What happens immediately after a domain expires

A domain does not disappear from the internet instantly the moment the paid period ends. Instead, an expired domain goes through several successive stages, and the chances of recovering the domain vary at each stage.

Stage 1. Domain Grace Period.

Immediately after a domain’s registration expires, it usually enters the relevant status, but the website and email associated with it may already have stopped working. This is the least worrying stage: the domain still belongs to you, and you can renew it at this stage at the standard price — just as if you’d simply been a little late with your payment. This period lasts from a few days up to 45 days, depending on the domain zone and your registrar’s rules.

Stage 2. Redemption Period.

If the grace period has expired and the domain has still not been renewed, it moves into the next, more worrying phase — the redemption period itself. It is still possible to recover the domain at this stage, but you will have to pay not only for the renewal but also a penalty: the cost of recovering an overdue domain at this stage can be several times, and sometimes as much as 5-15 times, higher than the standard registration fee. This price is not set by the hosting provider itself, but by the central administrator of the domain zone: at this stage, the domain is reinstated manually via a separate request to the registry, rather than automatically as with a standard renewal — hence the higher cost. This stage lasts for approximately a further 30 days.

Stage 3. ‘Pending Delete’ status and removal from the registry.

If the domain has not been reinstated by this stage, it enters the technical status of «Pending Delete» — this is the final few days before it is permanently deleted. After this, the domain is removed from the registry and becomes available for registration once again — meaning that anyone else can now register it. This is precisely what domain name hijacking is based on: there are people and services that specifically monitor ‘released’ domains of popular websites in order to register them first and resell them to the owner at an inflated price, or to use the name for fraudulent purposes. This phenomenon is known as cybersquatting, and it is the main reason why you should not delay in restoring your domain.

Generally speaking, it usually takes around two months from the expiry date until the domain is completely lost — this is your window of opportunity to rectify the situation.

Step-by-step guide: how to recover your website’s domain

Once you’ve established the current status of your domain, there’s no time to waste. The procedure depends on its current status, but in most cases the recovery process is fairly straightforward — the key is to act as quickly as possible.

1. Check the domain’s expiry date. To do this, use the Whois service, which is available free of charge on most registrar websites, and enter your domain name. This allows you to check the domain’s registration period and current status — whether it is still in the grace period or has already entered the redemption period. The same service also lets you check if the domain is taken; if the name has already been deleted and you want to find out whether it is available.
2. Contact your registrar directly.The quickest and most reliable way to clarify the situation is to write to the support team of the registrar where the domain was registered. They will be able to tell you exactly what stage the domain is at and how much it will cost to renew the domain with that registrar right now — regardless of whether it is a standard .com domain or, for example, you need to restore a .com.ua domain.
3. Pay for the restoration as soon as possible. The longer you delay, the worse the terms become: during the grace period, the cost is the standard renewal fee, but once the redemption period begins, the amount is significantly higher. It is therefore best to act as soon as you notice the problem, rather than putting it off «until tomorrow».
4. Wait for the technical restoration to take effect. Once payment has been made, the domain usually becomes active again within a few hours, or in rare cases, within a day. If your website or email does not start working immediately after renewal, the issue is most likely down to the DNS update: the question of how to update the DNS after renewal usually resolves itself; it simply takes a little time for the updated records to propagate across the internet.
5. If the domain has already been deleted, act even more quickly. The situation here is more complicated, and in essence it is no longer a question of how to renew an expired domain, but of how to re-register it. If a check shows that the name is still available, register it immediately before someone else does.

How to prevent losing your domain in future

The best way to protect your domain name from being lost is not to wait until a problem arises. Here are a few simple habits that will help you avoid this:

• Enable automatic domain renewal. This completely eliminates the human factor — payment is deducted automatically, and you won’t even have to remember to renew it.
• Register your domain for several years at once. The less often you have to think about renewal, the less likely you are to forget about it.
• Make sure your contact details are up to date. Reminders about what will happen if you don’t renew your domain on time are sent to the email address provided during registration — if this address is out of date or no longer checked, the warning will simply go nowhere.
• Keep a record of all the company’s domains in one place. If your business has several websites or subdomains, it’s worth having a single list with expiry dates — this is particularly important when a team, rather than just one person, is responsible for the domains.

When choosing a domain registrar in Ukraine, it’s worth selecting one that offers convenient tools for monitoring expiry dates right from the start. At Maxnet, you can purchase a domain with an auto-renewal option available straight away, as well as advance reminders of the approaching expiry date — these are precisely the simple settings that will protect you from a situation where your company’s website suddenly stops working due to a simple oversight.

Don’t forget to treat your domain name with the same seriousness as you would renting an office or renewing an important contract. Losing it due to non-payment is far easier than trying to recover it later, so the most reliable course of action is not to wait for a problem to arise, but to prevent it from happening in the first place.