Domain renewal, without the surprises

What happens when a domain expires

Day 0 — expiry. The domain stops resolving. Your website goes down and, critically, your email stops arriving. For most businesses the email is what makes this urgent rather than merely embarrassing.

Days 1–30 — grace period. You can usually still renew at the normal price. Most recoveries happen here.

Days 30–60 — redemption. The domain leaves your control. Only the original registrant can recover it, and the registry charges a restoration fee that commonly runs to several thousand rupees regardless of how cheap the domain was.

Days 60–65 — pending delete. Nothing can be done.

After that — anybody can register it, including drop-catching services that watch expiring names with traffic.

The four settings that prevent all of it

1. Register for multiple years. A five-year term removes four chances to forget.
2. Use a role email on the account — domains@yourcompany.in, not a personal address belonging to one employee. People leave; the domain stays.
3. Keep a valid card on auto-renew. Auto-renew fails silently when a card expires, so check it once a year.
4. Diarise the expiry yourself with a reminder 45 days out. Do not rely solely on emails reaching a working inbox.

How we handle it

Renewal notices go out at 30 days and 7 days before expiry, by email and by WhatsApp, with the exact amount. Nothing is charged silently. If a registry price has changed, that notice tells you before the card is touched.

You can check any domain’s expiry date yourself with a WHOIS lookup, including domains held elsewhere. The full detail is in domain renewal in India.