Photo credit: Shaun Ellithorpe

So! You’ve let your domain expire huh? Don’t feel bad. It happens. In fact, my husband recently let one of his domains slip too because he had not changed his email address and no longer receives email from that address. So… the domain expired.

If your domain has expired, don’t panic. You may still have a chance. When a domain expires and not renewed, the domain goes into a redemption mode. How many days depends on your registrar. Some have 30 days, some 45 days some less. The moment you find out your domain has expired, visit your registrar’s site to find out or contact them to ask. During this grace period, you can still renew your domain. So quickly log in to your account at your registrar to renew it.

If you don’t have access to the account anymore, then it’s a simple process of getting in touch with your registrar. In our case, we didn’t have the correct log ins anymore and we couldn’t request a new login because the email address is no longer functioning. So we had to fax a request with picture ID to the registrar. Each registrar has their own procedure so ask them what they need.

Once they received it, they changed the account email address and we re-gained access to the account to renew the domain. If your domain has expired longer than this grace period, the domain is released back into the pool of available domains. This is tough because someone could already have registered it. Go to your registrar, put in the domain as if you’re going to purchase it. It’ll tell you if it’s available or not. If not, better be quick and rescue it right away.