Your website shows a parked page, a page from your domain company saying the domain has expired, or nothing at all. At the same time customers say their emails to you bounce, and nothing new arrives in your inbox. When the website and the email both fail on the same day, the most likely cause is the domain name itself: the yearly registration ran out and was not renewed.
The good news is that an expired domain is rarely gone straight away. For generic domains such as .com, .net and .org, ICANN's rules give you a sequence of windows to get it back, and the price goes up as you move through them. The sooner you act, the cheaper and simpler it is.
Quick check: is it really the domain?
If your browser says the site can't be reached, that has several causes, and a lapsed domain is only one of them. Expiry has a clearer signature.
- The website and the email on the same domain stopped together.
- Visiting the site shows a page saying the domain has expired, often with renewal instructions. ICANN's policy requires that if a registrar points an expired name at a web page while it can still be renewed, that page must conspicuously say the registration has expired and explain how to renew.
- Your registrar sent reminder emails. Registrars must send at least two before expiry, approximately one month and one week before, plus another notice within five days after expiry if the name is not renewed. Search every inbox you have for your domain name and the word 'expire'.
- Look the domain up at lookup.icann.org. The result shows the registrar and the registration's expiry date.
What happens after the expiry date
For generic top-level domains, ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy and its registrant guidance describe these stages. The exact lengths of the first stage are set by your registrar, so read its terms or ask it directly.
- Expiry and the Auto-Renew Grace Period. ICANN says a registrar may offer a period of 1 to 45 days after expiry in which you can still renew, sometimes for a fee. It is optional, and depending on the registrar's terms the name may be offered to others or auctioned during this time.
- DNS is switched off. The policy requires registrars to interrupt the domain's DNS before deleting it: for the whole time between expiry and deletion if it is deleted within eight days, otherwise for at least the last eight days in which you can still renew. This is the moment your website and email stop. ICANN calls it a final warning to act.
- Deletion and the Redemption Grace Period. Generic TLD registries must offer a 30-day Redemption Grace Period straight after the registrar deletes the name. DNS stays off, nobody else can register or transfer it, and you can ask your registrar to restore it, usually for a restore fee.
- PendingDelete. If nobody restores it, ICANN says the name enters PendingDelete status for 5 days.
- Released. After that the domain is available to anyone on a first-come, first-served basis, and you would have to compete for it like everyone else.
Who to contact: your registrar, not your web designer or ICANN
Only the registrar that holds the domain can renew or restore it. That is not always the company you think. If a web designer, agency or hosting company bought the domain for you, the registration may sit in their account with a registrar you have never logged in to.
Go to lookup.icann.org, enter the domain and read the 'Registrar Information' section. Contact that company, or the person who set it up for you, and ask for the renewal or restore price. ICANN requires registrars to publish their renewal, post-expiration renewal and redemption fees, so the numbers should be on their website.
ICANN itself cannot help with the domain directly. It says it does not have the authority to transfer domain names, including expired ones, back to you.
How to renew or restore it
Which button you press depends on where the domain is in the timeline.
- Still in the registrar's renewal window: log in to the registrar's control panel, find the domain and renew it. Pay the renewal, and any late fee the registrar charges.
- In the Redemption Grace Period: ask the registrar to restore or redeem it. ICANN says you may face a redemption fee on top of the renewal. Do it well before the 30 days run out.
- Locked out of the registrar account: use the account recovery process. If the login email is on the expired domain, you may not receive the reset email, so ask the registrar's support to verify you another way.
- Want to move registrar? ICANN says a registrar cannot refuse a transfer just because the domain expired or was not renewed, unless a previous registration period was not paid. A name in the Redemption Grace Period has to be restored by the current registrar before it can move.
- After renewal, the registrar must restore your DNS settings immediately or as soon as is commercially reasonable. Some visitors may keep seeing the old result for a while as cached records expire. If the site still does not work after renewal, ask the registrar to check the name servers.
Your email stopped too, and here is why that matters
Email on your own domain needs the same DNS that just got switched off, so ICANN's own guidance says email tied to the domain stops along with the website. Messages people send you during the outage may bounce back to them. Ask your email provider whether any were held, and tell important contacts once things work again.
There is a trap here. If the contact email on your domain registration is an address on that same domain, the reminders and the post-expiry notice go to an inbox that stops working the moment the domain lapses. That is one of the most common ways a business loses a domain without noticing.
Don't pay the scary renewal letter
Once a domain is close to expiry, owners often receive emails or paper letters that look like invoices and push you to 'renew now'. Treat every one of them with suspicion. ICANN has warned of phishing emails that offer to renew your domain at an attractively low rate, copy its logo and send you to a fake payment page that collects card and personal details.
- ICANN says it never sends registrants expiration reminders or renewal requests, and never asks registrants for payment. Anything that claims to be a renewal from ICANN is fake.
- Only your registrar can renew your domain. Compare the sender's name with the registrar shown at lookup.icann.org.
- Don't click the link in the message. Type your registrar's address yourself and log in there.
- ICANN advises contacting your registrar directly if you are unsure whether a message about your domain is genuine.
Prevent it next time
Most domain losses are not about money. They are about a reminder going to an inbox nobody reads.
- Turn on auto-renew at your registrar and keep the card on file up to date. ICANN's registrant FAQs suggest checking your payment details if you rely on it.
- Put a contact email on the registration that is not on the same domain, such as a personal address, so reminders still reach you if the domain lapses.
- Ask your registrar whether you can renew for several years at once.
- Make sure the registration is in your name and you have the registrar login, even if someone else manages the website.
- Add the expiry date to your calendar a month early, as a backup to the registrar's emails.
- If you paid for a renewal and it did not happen, or the registrar would not let you renew or redeem in time, ICANN accepts Domain Renewal complaints through its Contractual Compliance complaint form.
If you want someone else to keep it running
Renewing at your registrar is the fix right now, and nothing replaces doing that today. If you would rather not manage this yourself afterwards, OneSol builds small-business websites with you on the Max plan ($1 for the first month, then $29/month), with your own domain connected, CRM and SEO set up, and we keep it running.