Last week, we wrote about customers who have let their hosting package expire. This week, we’re writing about an equally important topic: domain names. Your domain registrar is required to send out a renewal reminder thirty days and five days before your domain expires. Perhaps those emails are easy to overlook when you’re getting lots of other automated emails, but it’s worth paying attention. If there are carrots and sticks in this situation, the stick is that the stakes of losing your domain name are pretty high. The carrot, however, is that GoDaddy and some other registrars will often offer you a discount when you’re renewing early.
Immediately after you register a domain name, adopt this process immediately—you will never regret it. Set a calendar reminder to renew your domain name 11 months from that day’s date. In your calendar reminder, include the name of your domain registrar (such as GoDaddy) and your username and password. Or, if your calendar is public, don’t do that. And why do you have a public calendar? Make that stuff private! Why 11 months? Often, if you call up to renew early, you can get a discount. We’ve also written about the SEO benefits of a long-term domain registration, but this principle still applies. If you’ve renewed your domain name for 5 years, set a calendar reminder for 4 years and 11 months to renew it just a little bit early.
With your hosting package, your hosting company deletes your files quite quickly after your hosting package lapses. With domain names, it’s not quite that dire. You do have time to recover your expired domain before it gets released to the open market. But don’t get excited yet.
When a domain expires, there’s an “hosting package expire” that lasts 45 days. No one can snatch it away from you during that 45-day period.
In other words, when a domain-name registration reaches its expiration date, it gets renewed for one year automatically by the registry. The .com/.net/.org registry charges the registrar a US$6.00 fee for the new one-year registration term.
While the registrar is charged $6 by ICANN (the nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating domain names worldwide), they’re going to charge you a LOT more than that. At GoDaddy, you can renew an expired domain name with no extra fee for up to day 18. On day 19 to day 42, you’ll have to pay an $80 redemption fee. They say that the domain may not be available after day 42, which is a little weird because it defies ICANN’s rule above. Regardless—you should never let a domain name go unrenewed over 40 days.
Now, a couple of “scared straight” stories to emphasize the importance of renewing your domain on time. Sometimes, if you let a domain expire, it becomes classed as a “premium” domain, which means it can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to buy it back.
Of course, the other alternative is that someone could buy your domain name. One famous example involves our hometown team, the Dallas Cowboys. They forgot to renew their domain name, dallascowboys.com, back in 2010. Shortly after, they fired their head coach and landed in the news. When people went to learn more about what was going on with the Dallas Cowboys, the website had been purchased by someone else, and they found a photo of boys playing soccer and contact information for the sale.
Needless to say, keeping up with your domain registration is essential. Follow our tip and don’t worry about it ever again. One last tip: some domain registrars offer a service to synchronize your renewal dates if you have a lot of domain names to keep up with. It’s worth looking into! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line!
