How to check when your domain expires (and never lose it)

An expired domain takes your website and your email offline at the same time, and after the grace period anyone can buy it. It's one of the most painful outages because it's so easy to avoid.

How to check the expiry date

Use the WHOIS lookup or the domain section of the website checker. It asks the registry through RDAP (the modern replacement for WHOIS), or classic WHOIS for endings that don't support RDAP yet.

You'll see:

• Registrar: where you renew the domain.
• Registered: when it was first bought.
• Expires: the date you must renew by.
• Status: locks like clientTransferProhibited (good) or redemptionPeriod (urgent: the domain already expired).

Some country registries, such as .hu, don't publish the expiry date. In that case, log in to your registrar to see it.

Never lose a domain

1. Turn on auto-renew at your registrar.
2. Keep the payment card up to date. Most expired domains had auto-renew on but a dead card.
3. Use an email address you read as the registrant contact, and not one on the same domain: if the domain lapses, that inbox stops too.
4. Renew for several years for important domains.
5. Turn on the registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) to block unauthorised transfers.

If it already expired

Contact your registrar straight away. Most endings have a grace period of up to 30–45 days where you can renew at the normal price, followed by a redemption period with a higher fee. Once the domain is deleted, it's first come, first served.

Get a reminder

Domain monitoring checks the expiry date for you and emails you 30, 7 and 1 day before it runs out, for endings that publish the date.