A client’s domain has expired: what to do, in order

The site isn’t responding. The client has called, or — worse — one of the client’s own customers has written to you. You open the registrar panel and there’s the date: expired. How long ago, you don’t know yet, and that’s exactly the first thing to find out.

The good news is that it can almost always be recovered. The bad news is that time works against you in a non-linear way: for the first few weeks it costs little or nothing, then there’s a sharp step up, and past a certain point the domain goes back on the market and anyone can register it. Knowing where you are on that curve changes everything you do next.

What follows is in order of operational priority, not theoretical importance. First work out which phase you’re in, then talk to the client, then recover. In that order, because a phone call made after you understand the situation is worth ten times one made in a panic.

First things first: how much time you actually have

An expired domain isn’t “lost”: it moves through phases, and each one has different rules and costs. Simplifying, there are three.

• Late renewal. The domain has expired but still renews at the normal price. For .it domains, the Registry’s rules allow renewal up to 30 days after expiry with no surcharge. This is the phase you want to be in.
• Redemption. The domain drops out of DNS and is still yours, but getting it back requires a paid restore procedure, added on top of the renewal. The duration varies enormously: depending on the extension it runs from zero to 45 days. Zero means some extensions don’t provide this phase at all, so never assume you have it.
• Release. The domain becomes available again and anyone can register it. From here on it’s no longer a technical matter but a negotiation, if the new owner is willing to have one.

To work out where you are, the registrar panel often isn’t enough: it shows “expired” and little else. The precise information is in the EPP status you read from a whois — entries like autoRenewPeriod, redemptionPeriod, pendingDelete tell you exactly which phase the domain is in and how much room you have left. Check the actual expiry date too, not the one you remember: between partial renewals and registrar transfers it may not be the one in your head.

What to tell the client, and when

If you’re still in time, call them yourself. Before they notice, and before someone else notices for them. A client who finds out the site is down from a supplier who is already fixing it reacts one way; a client who finds out from one of their own customers reacts another way, and that difference you don’t get back.

The call has three parts, in this order: what happened, what you’re already doing, when you’ll give them a precise answer. The third is the one almost everyone skips and the one that holds the conversation together: if you don’t yet know how long it will take, say so, and set a time when you’ll call back regardless. A punctual update with no solution attached is worth more than busy silence.

What not to say: “it’s the registrar’s fault”, “the warning email never reached me”, “the auto-renewal failed”. These can all be true and they’re all irrelevant, because the client doesn’t have a contract with the registrar: they paid you so they wouldn’t have to think about it. Taking responsibility costs one sentence, not a speech — a long mea culpa moves the focus onto you exactly when it should be on the facts. And don’t promise timings you don’t control: the restore procedure is run by the registrar, not by you.

How to recover it, step by step

1. Establish the phase. Whois and EPP status, as above. Everything else depends on that answer.
2. If you’re in late renewal, renew now. Don’t wait for the client to pay you: front the money and recover it afterwards. The cost of letting the domain slip into the next phase is always higher than the renewal you’re fronting.
3. If you’re in redemption, open the restore request immediately. It’s rarely a button: with most registrars it’s a ticket, on their processing times. Opening it on a Friday evening or a Monday morning makes a concrete difference.
4. Expect the restore fee to be added to the renewal. It doesn’t replace it: you’ll pay both, and the restore amount varies a lot by extension and by registrar. Check your own price list before quoting a number to the client.
5. Check that DNS and email come back. The site reappearing doesn’t mean it’s over: MX records can come back on their own schedule, and email is the part the client will notice last and remember first.
6. Write down what happened. Two lines in your deadline tracker, with the date and the cause. It’s for you a year from now, when you wonder whether it had happened before.

There’s also a rare but real case where recovering isn’t worth it: a secondary domain never really used, a client who was about to rebuild everything anyway, a redemption fee out of proportion to the value. It’s worth saying so openly instead of spending their budget out of reflex — provided you say it beforehand, not after trying and failing.

The damage that isn’t the domain

Everyone focuses on the site being down because that’s the visible part, but it’s usually not the most serious one. If the domain also carries the email, at expiry email stops working: incoming messages are rejected and outgoing ones leave from a domain that doesn’t resolve. The client doesn’t notice straight away, they notice later — when someone tells them “I wrote to you and you never replied”. Quotes, orders, support requests: whatever was lost in those hours doesn’t come back with the restore.

Then there’s the part that can be repaired but takes work. Certificates are tied to the domain, so SSL auto-renewal can fail while the domain isn’t resolving, and it needs checking by hand after the restore. On rankings, a short absence produces no penalty: the problem starts if it drags on, because at that point pages begin dropping out of the index and getting back in takes time, not a click.

The damage a bank transfer doesn’t fix is the third one. The client won’t remember how long they were offline, they’ll remember that it happened and that they were the one who found out. In our experience it’s this, far more than the amount, that decides whether the contract gets renewed the following year.

The most common mistakes in the first hours

• Waiting for the client to pay before renewing. It’s the instinctive reaction and it’s almost always the most expensive choice: while you wait, the domain changes phase.
• Trying to fix it quietly. That only works if you manage it in half an hour. If you don’t, you’ve lost the advantage of having been the one to say it.
• Renewing without checking the registrant. If the domain is registered to the client rather than to you, some operations need their authorisation: discovering that mid-procedure costs hours.
• Changing registrar in the middle of the emergency. An expired or redeeming domain normally can’t be transferred. First put it back in order, then move it if you want.
• Closing the case when the site comes back. Without having checked the email, and without having worked out why the expiry notice reached nobody.

How to stop it happening again

The obvious answer is “use software”. The honest answer is that a tool adopted without a process behind it only moves the point at which you forget. First define who checks what and how often, then choose where to write it down.

1. Do the inventory. Export the active services from every supplier panel instead of reconstructing them from memory. That’s when the domains you’re paying for on behalf of clients you no longer have turn up.
2. Record the registrant alongside the date. Who each domain is registered to is information you need twice: in emergencies, and when a client leaves.
3. Don’t delegate the warning to the supplier. The registrar’s email goes to you, not to the client, and lands in the same inbox as everything else. You need a notice that starts from your side, using the rules described on the notifications and emails page.
4. Check auto-renewals, don’t trust them. They depend on a payment method that expires too, silently.
5. Give yourself a fixed review slot. Twenty minutes a week, always the same day.

On how to put the information together so it holds up over time we’ve written a separate guide, on organizing a client deadline tracker for a web agency. And if you’re wondering whether your spreadsheet is still enough, the detailed answer is in managing deadlines in Excel: when it stops working.

---

How we handle it

From here on we’re talking about our own tool, so take it for what it is. Dotify was born at EnneStudio, our web agency in Padua, after a forgotten renewal cost us a client. That isn’t an anecdote told for colour: it’s the reason the product exists, and the full story is on the about page.

What we built is meant to make this article unnecessary: one row per service with its date and status, client reminders that go out from the system instead of from our memory, and the ability to see in seconds what expires in the coming weeks. We use it every day on our own clients, before yours.

There’s a free plan if you want to try it with no commitment. And if you’re reading this with an expired domain open in another tab: close this page, check which phase you’re in and call the client. The rest can wait until tomorrow.