Domain name expiry
When a domain name approaches its expiry date you will be sent a notification email. Please see our billing information page for more information.
It is still possible to renew your domain name after the expiry date. Depending on the type of domain name you will have up to two or three months before your domain name is completely lost.
Nominet Domains (.uk)
If you do not contact us and ask us to renew the domain, Nominet will contact you directly and offer you the opportunity to renew the domain directly with them. Nominet's renewal fee is £80 plus VAT, compared to our fee of £25 plus VAT.
Nominet domains remain active for approximately one month after their expiry date.
Once the domain is more than a month past its expiry date it will be "Suspended" by Nominet. This means that Nominet's DNS servers will stop reporting DNS delegation information for your domain name, so any services associated with the domain will stop working.
Approximately three months after the expiry date Nominet will delete the domain from their database. This means that the domain is now available for anyone to re-register, on a first come first served basis.
You can still renew your domain at any point up until it is deleted from the Nominet database. No additional charges apply for late renewals.
Global Domain Names
For the majority of other domain names the domain will be disabled by the registrar when it reaches its expiry date. It will still be possible to renew the domain, but all services associated with it will stop working.
If the domain is renewed within approximately one month of the expiry date then it can still be renewed at the normal price. Once the renewal is completed the associated services will begin to work again.
Approximately one month after the expiry date the domain will enter the "Pending Delete" stage. This means that the registry has been informed that the domain has not been renewed, and it is in the queue to be deleted. Once the domain reaches this stage it is still possible to recover the domain, but there will be an additional charge for this process. Please contact us to find out the current cost.
After a few weeks in the "Pending Delete" stage, the domain will be deleted from the registrar database. The domain then becomes available for anyone to re-register, on a first come first served basis.
