If you’ve spent any amount of time working in the online world, you’ve likely let a domain lapse accidentally or heard of someone who has. For me, the first offense was a stock photography site I was working on with two other business partners. This was before stock photo sites were all the rage and we had a ton of great images to start us off along with a great business plan. I singlehandedly shot the whole thing down by losing the domain due to expiration. Everyone lost interest after that.
It seems like such a simple thing, but is often overlooked. Nowadays in the world of domains, things have changed significantly. We have redemption periods offering lots of grace for absent minded site owners. You’d have to try pretty hard to lose a domain anymore. Course there are still ways to screw things up for your site due to inattentiveness to your domain expiration.
The latest mishap took Foursquare offline for the better part of the day on Thursday. I bet GoDaddy was enjoying the traffic to their ads though. Foursquare, for those of you who aren’t familiar with them, is a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by making a “check in”.
Here’s what the Foursquare page looked like on Thursday:
Here’s the thing. Foursquare is working on a new round of funding to the tune of $10 million. At one point recently, they were valued at over $60 million. Renewing a domain name seems like the last thing a company worth $60 million would overlook. Especially when that domain name was key to your service being available to your critically important customer base.
The lesson in all of this is simple: Keep an eye on your domain names. Check them regularly. Make sure your email contacts are up to date and headed to a box you’re sure to see. A sure fire way to avoid disaster is simply use the auto renew feature. When you’re ready to drop a domain you’re no longer going to use, just log in and set it to manual renewal.
The domain I lost changed my attentiveness to my domains. Now that I have over 1,000 I’m actively using, it was good I learned the hard way early on.
Make sure you’re current on your domain renewals.
March 29th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Yes, I totally agree with what you said. I have a couple blogs and i’ve always kep an eye on my domain expiration. Nevertheless, this is a very great reminder.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:13 am
Hi,
I totally agree with you, I have had a bad experience for not memorizing my domain name renewel date which has not only caused me pain but also fine. Now no matter what I always remember when domain's are going to be expired and always renew them as early I can
Thank you for remding me though that I have a domain to renew.
Regards,
Julia
Madrid Spain
March 29th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Isn't this common sense though, everyone who writes a blog or has a directory should really do this in a monthly basis.
March 29th, 2010 at 5:41 am
I have GoDaddy as my registrar and I am pretty sure they automatically renew your domains whether you tell them to or not. (Pretty typical of GoDaddy) I have a few renewals coming up you just made me nervous about!
March 29th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
I have all my domains set to auto-renew. Although I recently had emails regarding a couple of domain expirations. I had plenty of time to renew if I wished to but these were domains I no longer wanted to hold on to, so I let them go.
March 29th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Actually, GoDaddy doesn't. It might be turned on by default for some, but it's not a guaranteed option. GoDaddy is where Foursquare.com is registered and they went offline due to an expired domain.
March 29th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
You'd think it'd be common sense, but it isn't. I would be that my experience is the same as many who do business online.
March 29th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
You're actively using over 1,000 domains! Wow that seems like a lot to me, but I guess that's just the way you do business
March 29th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I also have GoDaddy and one time my 2 domain goes offline, so they don't have automatic renew…
March 29th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Thanks for the great contribution. Read your blog regularly and I like your posts.
March 29th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
I like that you think. Thank you for share very much.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
the good thing about godaddy is that they will spam your email with notifications 3 months before the expire date, I get sick of them and renew early lol
March 29th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I have heard of the news about Foursquare. It is really an important task for us to pay much attention to domain renewal dates.
I have name.com as my registrar. Fortunately, I can receive the letters of domain name renewal. In order to keep our sites or blogs running everyday, we should check it in a monthly basis.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:03 am
Incredible that such a large company could let that happen. They are lucky to have that redemption period. I hope that doesn't happen to my site ever. =) Oh and btw 1k domains sounds like a crazy amount. I have no idea how you keep track of all of that!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:49 am
Isn't that the truth!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:50 am
I keep it all in a spreadsheet. I actually just went through all my domains and got rid of about 150 of them recently. Gotta do that every once in a while. Especially since I end up adding 5 or 10 a week on average for projects.
March 30th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Such a simple thing but so easy to forget especially if you have a lot of domains.
Auto renewal is good, but can result in a few surprises at the bank when a large proportion of your domains gets re-registered
March 30th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Sounds really weird that something like this happens to a 60 Million $ business. But yeah I recently heard that there are even companies that are specialized on buying those expired domains as soon as they can. So watch out haha.
It never happened to me till now but if you are managing 1000 domains I can see the issue. Does autorenewal cost extra btw
March 30th, 2010 at 7:35 am
What will happen to the domains that expired? I've got two sites that expired. What I gonna do?
March 31st, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I could not agree more and I am grateful for the timely reminder to check. Thank you.
March 31st, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Thank you for your sharing.
March 31st, 2010 at 6:16 pm
This is great advice and it shows that even companies with the resources to manage hundreds of thousands of users can make mistakes like this. I know I personally have lost a couple of domains I would like to have back due to expiration. Also make sure the email address you receive notifications to is current or they won't do you any good.
March 31st, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I like that you think. Thanks for sharing. I read your blog regularly and I like your posts.
March 31st, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Very surprised to read this. I control over 50 domains and each one is programed in my outlook and synced to my blackberry to give me a reminder a week before renewal time, but usually I check regularly so I renew well in advance of that. The introduction of the grace period was a very smart move, and saved alot of asses. Good post
March 31st, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I was just looking around the net while waiting on a few domain transfers to finish from some recent sales and found your blog. Thanks for the info.
April 1st, 2010 at 7:20 pm
I have never actually lost a domain due to forgetting about the expiration. Recently I was relying on a friend to renew my domain and he happened to forget. I was pretty choked when I saw the parked domain ads the next morning. Luckily the domain was recovered quite easily. Still the thought of losing a profitable domain due to such a simple mistake has opened my eyes. I won't be relying on that friend for something so important next time.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:52 am
really nice posting sometimes it happens that we forget to renew our domain.but not upto the upper limit, if it happen what will be the result… thanks
April 2nd, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Last month one of my clients forgot to renew his domain. He paid an extra 217 euros for renewal just because of that. Watch out for SMS hosting
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Currently, I have something around 10 domains, I guess. My registar lets renews in advance for three years, at maximum. If I could, I'd renew for 10 years in advance, each one.
And yeah, I have auto-renew feature available too, but my hosting (and registar) is accessed by other guys too, so it isn't interesting to have credit card info there.
April 7th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
I'm using namecheap as my registar, and after i read this i will start renew my domains for more then one year, like i was doing.
Thank you for this information.
April 8th, 2010 at 1:58 am
I also wish to have a website of my own. But I still don't have a account to buy.
April 9th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
I'm glad that my registar lets me do auto-renewal because it would be impossible for me to remember when to renew all my domains. It does suck if I do not want to keep a domain name, but at least the cost is minimal that it would not be a huge deal if I renewed one that I didn't want anymore.
April 9th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
I know I let a domain slide past the renewal date and really regretted it because another webmaster in my town was ready and waiting (local site). Lost the site and they went big with it…
April 11th, 2010 at 8:09 am
Yes, you are right. Happened to me a few years ago. I forgot to renew a domain name and it's for sale for a few thousand bucks since then.
April 11th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
As the other commenter said – GD spam you with notices and then you have like 3months grace period sometimes – no excuses!
April 12th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
You are a very smart person!
April 12th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
in opposite we can get profit by renewing the expired domain with condition the former owner wants to buy it back.
April 12th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Thanks for the great post. I always try to save concrete or construction related posts like this one.
April 13th, 2010 at 11:21 am
I receive one mail by post with such content and asking me to submit my credit card and domain name details with further discounts etc.
April 13th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Actually Domain renewal feature at GoDaddy is very annoying and webhosting at GoDaddy is not so good.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Like you having over a thousand domains, you get sick of all of the different email reminders from Godaddy, a lot of my domains I don't renew and use them for testing various methods, so I took all of mine off auto renew – Then I lost one while I was away on vacation so they are back on auto renew. I would rather pay for an extra year on some I don't want than lose one I have put a lot of work into.
April 14th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Thanks for the update, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for that.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:27 am
Nice Website. You should think more about RSS Feeds as a traffic source. They bring me a nice bit of traffic.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Nice Website. You should think more about RSS Feeds as a traffic source. They bring me a nice bit of traffic.
April 18th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
I really appreciate you taking the time to post this info for readers like me to read.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Very useful article, thanks a lot.
I always write my domain names and all informations about it includes the day of expiration in my "business book" so i won't forget nothing.
April 19th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
I like the blog!
April 21st, 2010 at 1:20 pm
You're actively using over 5,00 domains! Wow that seems like a lot to me, but I guess that's just the way you do business
May 12th, 2010 at 8:46 am
I used to underestimate such a significant factor as date of renews of my domain name – now I'll be more attentive!
June 12th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Your blog is so informative ?keep up the good work!!!!
June 18th, 2010 at 6:20 am
Spent any amount of time working in the online world, you’ve likely let a domain lapse accidentally or heard of someone who has. People mostly forget to renewal domain and had to pay more money to renew it so for saving this money you should keep reminder for renewal date of your domain.
July 5th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
I have many website so I’ve always keep an eye on my domain expiration. If you have any solution for automatic renewal domain so please tell me.
August 18th, 2010 at 4:38 am
you all do such a great job at such Concepts… can't tell you how much I, for one appreciate all you do!