It scares me to death when I imagine of forgetting to renew my domain name the moment it expires. Do you know what will happen if you forget to renew your domain name? It will be available for registration and any desperate buyer will snatch it at that moment without wasting a second. Imagine losing all the traffic on your website you have spent your time and money building just because you didn’t remember to renew it!
This sounds awful and you’ll want the ground to open up and swallow you. You’ll get out of momentum completely. Gaining this traffic again is not easy. So, avoid this by renewing it always. It is better you register your name for a longer period like one year other than a short period let’s say six months. This will save you some money as your registrar company will offer you a discount.
ICANN allows a domain name to be registered for a maximum of 10 years. It is better to renew it early before it actually expires. The period you select will be added to your existing one.
To get access to your domain expiration date, you’ll have to log into your account which is with your registrar company or you can check it in Whois information from any other domain name registration company.
The good thing about some registrar companies is that they’ll be sending notifications to their customers informing them about their domain name expiration dates. But keep in mind that not all companies do send these notifications.
Be careful when you get a domain name renewal notice. Why? You see… the world has got some people who are con artist. Not all people are genuine. Some people will want to harvest from where they never planted. If you receive a notice of renewal that is not from your registrar company, ignore it completely. Don’t act upon it.
If you act upon it, you’ll later on realize that it has been transferred to another registrar company. A gain, there is a threat that you might lose it completely. There are many unscrupulous registrars out there sending notices to renew domain names. Stay away from them.
Note that before a domain name is available for registration again, there will be a grace period of about 60 days (30 days grace period plus 30 days redemption period) to renew it. This period is meant to safeguard you from losing it.
After the grace period is over and if you did not renew it, then it will be deactivated and placed into a 30 days redemption period. Note that not all domains name make it to the redemption period.
Once the redemption period lapses, there will be 5 days during which the domain name will be deleted from the registry. After the deletion of the domain name is complete, anybody can register it as the new legal owner.
Remember to renew your domain name always or else you’ll lose all your effort and traffic.