Your Guide to Domain Renewals

Maintaining domain name ownership is crucial for your website, yet it requires regular renewals to avoid significant consequences like loss of visibility or potential hijacking. This comprehensive guide to domain renewal covers everything from understanding why they need renewing, and the renewal process to dealing with expired domains. We’ll also look at the difference between domain registration and renewal. Whether you’re a small business or running a personal site, this guide will show you everything you need to know about domain renewal and help ensure you never lose control of your website’s address.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Your domain name is your website’s address on the internet. Renewing it ensures your website remains accessible.
• Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain for the first time. Renewal ensures it remains yours.
• The domain name life cycle is registration, active period, and renewal.
• Renewal cost depends on the domain type (e.g., .com, .org), registrar pricing, and renewal period.
• Renew through your Hosted.com® Customer Portal. Choose a renewal period and complete the payment.
• Missed renewals can lead to website and email downtime and even domain loss.
• Set up renewal reminders or enable auto-renewal to avoid missing the expiration date.

Why Domain Names Need Renewal

When you register a domain name, while you do become the owner, you are basically paying for a lease that grants you the exclusive right to use that web address. This lease is subject to renewal to keep the domain valid, usually yearly, or up to every 10 years, depending on the options your provider offers.

Fundamentally, domain ownership is “temporary” and keeping it requires renewal. When a domain expires, you still have a few ways to make sure you don’t lose it. If you allow the registration period to expire, it becomes available for anyone to register, potentially resulting in you losing it or the domain being hijacked.

Renewing your domain regularly is important for several reasons:

Maintaining Web Traffic: The most important reason is keeping traffic flowing to your site. Your domain name is the address for your website. Not renewing it can result in difficulty for users and customers to find and interact with you.

Brand Recognition: For businesses and organizations, domain names are often an integral part of their brand identity. Losing control of your domain can damage your brand’s credibility, confuse customers, and lower trust in your online business.

Email Communication: Most email accounts include domain names. Allowing your domain to expire can lead to losing your email addresses potentially causing communication to slow down or stop completely and data loss.

Avoiding Domain Hijacking: If your domain expires, it becomes vulnerable to domain hijacking, where others can register it and redirect traffic to competitor websites. It can also potentially be used for malicious purposes, such as phishing scams as your domain would be considered trustworthy by users.

Renewal vs. Registration

Domain renewal and registration are separate processes in the lifecycle of domain name ownership.

Domain registration is the initial step in acquiring a domain name. It involves choosing a domain, checking its availability, and registering it through an accredited provider.

During registration, you typically provide Registrant information, such as your name, address, contact, and billing details. Once you have paid the initial registration fee, you become the registered owner of the domain name for the specified time.

Domain renewal, on the other hand, is the process of extending your ownership and control over an existing domain name beyond its initial registration period. It is the continuation of your lease on the domain name.

Domain Name Life Cycle

The domain name life cycle refers to the various stages a domain name goes through from its initial registration to potential expiration or renewal. Understanding this life cycle is important for domain owners to ensure they maintain control over their domain and avoid any disruptions or loss of ownership. Here are the general stages in the domain name life cycle:

Registration: This is the initial stage where an available domain name is registered with a provider.

Active Period: During this stage, the registered domain name is active and can be used for hosting websites, email services, or other online applications. The active period lasts for the duration of the initial registration period, which can be extended through renewal.

Renewal Period: As the active period approaches the expiration date, the registrar typically sends renewal notices to the registrant, prompting them to renew the domain for an additional period (usually one year or longer). Renewing the domain during this period ensures continuous ownership and avoids any service disruptions.

Grace Period: If the domain is not renewed during the renewal period, it enters a grace period, which can vary in length depending on the registrar’s policies. During this grace period, the registrant can still renew the domain, but typically with additional redemption fees applied.

Redemption Period: If the grace period expires without renewal, the domain enters a redemption period, which is a final opportunity for the registrant to recover the domain by paying a higher redemption fee. This period typically lasts around 30 days.

Pending Delete: After the redemption period, if the domain is still not renewed, it enters the pending delete status, during which the domain is deactivated and removed from the registry’s database.

Release: Finally, if the domain remains unredeemed, it is released back into the pool of available domain names and can be registered by anyone on a first-come, first-served basis.

Domain Renewal How to Guide

Renewing your domain name with Hosted.com® is simple. You will receive automated renewal notifications at 60, 30, 14, and 7 days, and the day before the expiration date.

Here are the general steps to keeping your domain in your possession and your website up and running smoothly:

Auto-Renewal

All domains registered with Hosted.com® have auto-renewal enabled. This enables our system to automatically generate your renewal invoice.

If you have a valid bank card saved to your account, the payment will be automatically processed for you.

The automated system will only renew your domain name once the payment of the Renewal Invoices has been received.

Manual Renewal

If you have disabled Auto Renewal on your domain name, the system will not generate a Renewal Invoice and your domain will not be automatically renewed. You will then have to manually renew by following the steps below:

1. Login to your Hosted.com® Client Portal.
2. Locate your domain name and check the renewal date.
3. All domains are valid for at least 1 year from registration date. Hosted.com® offers longer registration periods up to a maximum of 10 years.
4. Select your new renewal period.
5. Complete the payment.
6. You can always reset your domain to renew automatically.

Domain Renewal Costs

Factors affecting domain renewal cost can vary depending on the provider, additional services, and Top Level Domain (TLD).

Provider: Different companies may offer varying renewal prices for the same domain name. Some registrars may have higher or lower base renewal fees, while others may offer discounted rates for multi-year renewals or bundled services.

Privacy Protection Services: Many registrars offer additional services like domain privacy protection, which can add to the renewal cost. These services help keep your personal contact information private in the public WHOIS database.

Auto-Renewal: Some registrars may charge extra fees for automatic renewal options, where your domain is automatically renewed before its expiration date to ensure continuity.

Redemption Fees: If you miss the initial renewal period, most registrars charge a higher “redemption fee” to recover an expired domain name during the grace period. These fees can be significantly higher than the standard renewal cost.

Transfer Fees: If you decide to transfer your domain to a different registrar during the renewal process, there may be additional transfer fees involved, charged by either the current or the new registrar.

TLD Demand: TLDs like .com, .net, and .org, which are widely used and in high demand, generally have higher renewal costs compared to less popular or niche TLDs. The pricing is influenced by the supply and demand dynamics of each TLD.

TLD Category: Extensions such as Generic TLDs (gTLDs) like .com, and .org, and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) like .us may have different renewal costs. This depends on the regulations set by their respective Domain Registry.

New TLDs: Newer gTLDs, such as .io, .ai, or .xyz, introduced in recent years, may have different pricing strategies compared to legacy TLDs like .com or .net, which have been around for longer and have more established pricing models.

What Happens When Your Domain Expires?

Despite your best efforts, there may be instances where you accidentally let a domain name expire. However, all is not lost. As we’ve already mentioned, you have some leeway after the expiration date and opportunities to recover it.

Most of time, you’ll have a grace period after the expiration date, during which you can still renew your domain name. The length of this grace period varies, but it’s typically around 30 days. During this time, your domain name is put on hold, and you can still regain control by renewing it.

If you do not renew the domain within this grace period, it enters a redemption stage for 30 days (sometimes more) at the Registry. During this stage, the domain may be auctioned off.

During the redemption period, you can still regain control of your domain name. Still, the process becomes more complicated, and the fees are often even higher than during the grace period. Additionally, you may need to provide documentation proving your ownership of the domain, such as past registration records or correspondence with the original company you registered it through.

It is important to note that recovering an expired domain is not always guaranteed, especially if the domain has already been re-registered by someone else during the redemption period. Once a domain is re-registered, it becomes the property of the new owner, and your chances of recovering it are significantly lower.

Additionally, some companies may have stricter policies or limitations on domain redemption, particularly for certain TLDs or premium domains. In some cases, they may reserve the right to auction off or retain expired domains after a certain period.

Tips to Prevent Losing Your Domain Name

Letting your domain expire can cause several massive problems. You won’t own the domain anymore, and someone else can register it. This can be a big problem as a domain name is important to your business and branding.

Next, your website and email services tied to the domain will stop working. This can disrupt your business operations and communication.

While there may be a grace period to renew the domain for a fee, after that it can go up for auction. If someone else buys it, you may have to pay a much higher price to get it back, if the new owner is open to selling it to you.

Here are a few steps to help you avoid losing your domain name:

Renew on Time: This is the most common reason domains are lost. Enable auto-renewal with a valid payment method or set calendar reminders to renew manually. Your provider will also send email notifications to let you know it’s approaching expiration, pay attention to them.

Longer Renewal Periods: Choose to renew your domain for a longer period, like 2-5 years at a time. This can save you from having to remember annual renewals and gives you peace of mind.

Keep Your Info Updated: Ensure your contact information and billing details are correct and up to date in the account you used for your initial registration.

Privacy Protection: While more applicable to domain spoofing or hijacking, some providers offer domain privacy services to hide your information publicly displayed on the WHOIS database.

Preventing your domain from expiring is better than trying to recover it. While there are ways to potentially recover an expired domain, the best approach is to not let it expire in the first place. Setting up automatic renewal and reminders and renewing well in advance of the expiration date can help you avoid the hassle and additional costs associated with recovering it.

FAQS

Other Blogs of Interest:

– The Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Names

– Domain vs Subdomain: What’s the Difference?

– What is Domain Protection?

– What is Domain Monitoring?

– How To Transfer A Domain From Google