Domain expiry & renewals

You do not own your domain name, you rent it. If that rental lapses, your website and every email address on it can go dark overnight, and eventually someone else can grab the name. TLDTrack tracks the renewal date, reminds you as it approaches, and notices when you have renewed, so it never sneaks up on you.

A domain is rented, not owned

When you "buy" a domain you are really paying to use it for a set period, usually a year or a few years at a time. Before that period ends you have to renew it with the company you bought it from, known as your registrar. Miss the date and the domain first stops working, then sits in a grace period, and finally becomes available for anyone to register.

Because the site and the email both run on that name, an expired domain takes down your whole online presence at once. It is also surprisingly common, since renewal reminders land in inboxes people no longer check, or on cards that have since expired.

How TLDTrack tracks it

There are two parts working together, and both read from the same official source: the public registry record for your domain.

• The reminders. TLDTrack knows each domain's expiry date and sends a daily reminder email while any domain is inside one of your reminder windows, so a renewal is always on your radar with time to spare.
• Automatic renewal detection. A daily check looks up domains within 60 days of expiry. If the registry now shows a later expiry date than TLDTrack had on file, it treats that as a renewal: it updates the stored date, resets the countdown, and records the renewal in your history, all without you touching anything.

When the reminders arrive

Each window covers a range of days. While a domain is inside a window you have switched on, it is included in one reminder email a day, which lists every domain currently in a window. These are the windows:

• 90 days and 60 days out: early notice, plenty of time to plan a multi-year renewal.
• 30 days and 14 days out: the reminders you should not be ignoring.
• 7 days out: an urgent, final warning.
• Past due: a domain that has already lapsed stays in the reminder for 7 days, then it is archived automatically.

You can choose which of these windows you want to hear about at the account level, under Settings > Notifications, so if the 90-day window is too early for you, you can turn it off and keep the later ones. The past-due window always sends, because a lapsed domain is too important to silence.

What you need before you start

• A domain with a known expiry date. TLDTrack pulls this from the registry when you add the domain. Some registries publish less detail than others, which can affect how much is available.
• The Expiry check switched on for that site. It is a per-site toggle.
• Notification contacts set to hear about expiry. Reminders go by email, and by SMS too if a contact has that turned on and your account has SMS credits. See alerts and notifications.

What you will see, and what to do

Each site shows its domain expiry date on the Monitoring tab, and across your Domains list you can see the dates side by side, which makes it easy to spot a name that is creeping up on its deadline. When a warning arrives:

• Renew it with your registrar. Log in to whoever you bought the domain from and renew, ideally for several years at once so it drops off your worry list.
• Confirm the date moved. If you renew within 60 days of expiry, TLDTrack detects the new date on its next daily check and the countdown resets, so you can be sure the renewal actually took. The renewal is also recorded in your history.
• Check who owns the account. If you are not sure which registrar holds the domain or who has the login, sort that out now, not on the day it expires.

How to switch it on, step by step

1. 1
   Open the website from your Domains list.
2. 2
   Go to the Monitoring tab and switch on the Expiry check.
3. 3
   Confirm your notification contacts, and choose which reminder windows you want to hear about under Settings > Notifications.
4. 4
   That is it. The date is tracked from then on, reminders go out daily while a domain is in one of your chosen windows, and a renewal made within 60 days of expiry is detected automatically.

The domain's renewal date is separate from its DNS records and from your SSL certificate expiry. All three have their own dates, and it is worth monitoring each one. To choose who is told as a renewal date approaches, see alerts and notifications.

Where to set this up

Good to know

• The expiry date comes from the official registry record, not a manual entry.
• The reminder windows are 90, 60, 30, 14 and 7 days before expiry, plus past due. While a domain is in a window you have switched on, you get a daily reminder email.
• For domains within 60 days of expiry, renewals are detected automatically once the registry shows a later date, and the countdown resets on its own.
• TLDTrack reminds and tracks, but the actual renewal always happens at your registrar.