Domains: What Happens When a Domain Expires

What happens after a domain name expires?

When a domain expires through us, it becomes inactive immediately, a parking page is displayed, and all the services attached to it, such as a website and/or email cease to function.  It is not possible to make any updates to the domain while it is expired.  The domain will remain available for reactivation at your regular domain rate under your list of Expired Domains while the domain is in the grace period.  To reactivate an expired domain, please see the article, How to Renew Domains (including Bulk Renewal).  

Currently, we offer a non-guaranteed 29-day grace period for renewal for Generic top-level domains, or "gTLD's" (This includes .com, .net, .biz, .cc, .tv, .org, .me, .so, .tel, .mobi, .asia, .name, and .info).  Other TLD's may have different grace periods, or no grace period. There is no guaranteed grace period.  Once a domain expires, we may dispose of it at any time according to the registration agreement.  After the grace period elapses, the domain may go into an auction, or into the Redemption Grace Period (see How to Recover Domains in Redemption Status).

We highly recommend that you enable Auto Renew for your domains (see Enable/Disable Auto Renew for Domains).  Likewise, we suggest you keep track of your domain expiration dates and renew well in advance to avoid unintentional down time or loss of the name.  You can sort your domains by expiration date, or run reports to help aid you with the management of your domain expiration dates (see Transaction History and other Reports).  Courtesy emails are sent out 45 days prior to expiration to warn you of the impending expiration.  Once you renew the domain, all previous settings will be recovered and the domain will be active (see Propagation Time for Registered and Reactivated Domains).

Renewal years are always added to the end of the current registration period (i.e., the new expiration date is the same whether you renew two months early or the day before expiration), so you will never lose time on your domain by renewing early.

What happens after the domain has passed the grace period?

After a domain has passed through any applicable expiration grace period, the domain may be sold in auction, removed from the account, or go into a redemption grace period (during which time there is an additional fee involved to recover the domain).

Domain Auction: After the 29 day grace period, the domain may be put up for auction on sites like auctions.godaddy.com and dropcatch.com.

"Redemption Grace Period" or RGP, is the grace period provided after the registrar has issued a delete request to the registry. The Redemption Period is managed by the registry of the TLD. There is a fee to restore your domain from either Redemption status (normally $250) and it is not discountable.  This fee is in addition to the domain renewal fee.  To process a Redemption order, please follow the instructions in the article, How to Recover Domains in Redemption Status.

The Redemption Period lasts 30-60 additional days (it is not the same every time, but usually it is about 45 days). Only the previous registrant can recover the domain during this time, and it must be retrieved through the previous registrar.  The Redemption Grace Period is named differently for some TLDs; the .org equivalent, for example, is "Pending Delete - Restorable."

Domains in our system can go into either Redemption Grace Period (30-60 days) or Extended Redemption Grace Period (90 days).  Please see the article, Differences between RGP and Extended RGP for more details. 

Our domain affiliate, Enom, makes the decision whether the domain will go to an auction or will go to the "Redemption Grace Period".

"Pending Delete" refers to the 5-day time-frame after redemption. You can find if a domain is in pending delete status by doing a WHOIS search at tucowsdomains.com/whois-search. In the WHOIS info, the domain is in the "Pending Delete" status when only the "Pending Delete" status is displayed, and is not combined with the redemptionPeriod or pendingRestore status . During the time the domain is in "Pending Delete" status, the registry holds the domain and it cannot be recovered.  Once the Registry deletes the domain, it becomes available for anyone to purchase as a new domain.  It is available on a first-come first-served basis. You can also check a domain's status by using a domain monitoring service, such as webmaster.ninja/domainwatch. After you sign up for an account there, you can enter the domain you want in the "Domain Watch" section, and it should send you alerts about status changes and domain expirations.

For more information on purchasing domains that are owned by someone else, see the HelpDesk article: Get a domain that is owned by somebody else