Expired Domain? DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!
Just this week three of my clients experienced an expired domain. What’s a domain? It’s the URL that is your website. As in www.mywebsite.com or in my case, Moran Media’s domain is www.remoran.com. This happened on three different platforms. Each time it was something silly, like not having auto renew enabled, having old credit card information, or insufficient funds in their account.Depending on who they were registered with the repercussions were different for each. One had a grace period where they had time to correct the information and get their domain back before their site went down. Another missed the notice their transaction failed and only noticed when their site went down. Another got a notification as soon as the transaction failed but their domain registrar turned off their site right away without giving them a chance to correct the information.
For some people this could be disastrous. Most domain registrars give you a grace period to get everything in order, some may not. Make sure you know what your registrar will do if you miss a payment. If you don’t catch it in time your domain could be sold off to the next bidder, this is not something you want. You’re reputation could be ruined by a competitor or a detractor, your site rankings could be harmed, your customers might think you have closed.
How can we avoid this?
Just follow a few simple steps
- Make sure you know the rules of your domain registration and it’s a company you can trust.
- What’s the grace period?
- What happens on expiration?
- What’s their customer service number if you have an emergency?
- How’s their customer support?
- Make sure your information is accurate and up to date with your registrar.
- Email goes to an account you check daily.
- Phone numbers are accurate.
- Credit Card information is always up to date.
- Set your account to auto renew.
- If you can, use a credit card rather than a bank card or paypal so it can renew without much effort from you.
- Mark your calendar for renewal time.
- This way you can change the card that is used to pay if you need to.
- You can pay for multiple years if you like.
- You can add a promo code or coupon code and save some money.
In the old days of the internet there were a lot of scams. You’d get a renewal notice from a company, pay for the renewal and then suddenly you switched registrars. Thankfully that scam is seen a lot less these days, but it’s still good to note who your registered with. This will save you headaches later. I always advise keeping that information with your passwords and all of your other business information, so you always have it.
Have you ever had your domain expire?
