Renewal and expiry: what happens when a domain runs out

A registration runs for a fixed period

You never hold a domain indefinitely. You hold it for a period, and you keep it by renewing before that period ends. (Lesson 1 explains why it’s a licence and not a purchase.)

For .au names, auDA’s renewal guide says “you can select a licensing period of one, two, three, four or five years”, and that licences “can be renewed up to 90 days prior to the licence expiry date”. Other endings set their own limits.

Renewing early doesn’t waste anything. The new period is added to the end of the current one, so a renewal made two months ahead gives you the same new expiry date as one made on the last day, minus the risk. Wondering what the recent .au price change means for your renewal? Read our guide to the October 2026 .au price rise.

What happens after the expiry date

The details depend on the ending. Australian names follow one short timeline. Most others follow a longer one with more stages.

.au names: 30 days, then gone

auDA is direct about each stage. After expiry, “there is a 30 calendar day grace period after your domain name licence expires in which you can renew it”. During it, “you will not be able to use or update your .au domain name”, “which means your website and email services will stop working during this time”. If you still haven’t renewed, the name “will be removed from the registry at the end of the 30 days and become available to be registered by the public on a first-come, first-served basis”.

Renewal is also when your eligibility is checked again. If the domain is tied to an ABN or ACN, read our guide to the ABN check at renewal.

.com and most other endings: more stages, rising cost

These stages come from ICANN’s Expired Registration Recovery Policy, which every registrar of .com-style names has to follow:

• You must be warned. Registrars have to notify you “at least two times” before expiry, “approximately one month prior” and “approximately one week prior”, and at least once more within five days afterwards.
• The name stops working. After expiry the registrar interrupts the domain’s DNS, so the website and email go dark. That’s deliberate: it gets your attention while you can still renew.
• There’s a last chance. “All gTLD registries must offer a Redemption Grace Period of 30 days immediately following the deletion of a registration, during which time the deleted registration may be restored.”
• The fees must be published. Registrars have to make their renewal, late-renewal and restore fees “reasonably available”. Look them up before you need them.

After redemption comes “pending delete”, a status ICANN describes this way: “Your domain will remain in this status for several days, after which time your domain will be purged and dropped from the registry database.”

Side by side

What breaks when a domain lapses

More than the website. Work through the list before deciding a renewal can wait:

• The website stops loading, or shows a holding page from the registrar.
• Email stops arriving. Mail sent to any address at the domain bounces or disappears.
• Password resets stop arriving too. Every account that uses an address at the domain, such as banking, accounting software or social media, sends its reset emails into the void.
• Anything else hanging off the domain’s DNS goes with it: booking systems, online shops, staff logins.

If someone else registers it

Once a name is released, whoever registers it next controls everything sent to it. That includes email addressed to your old addresses, and any password reset that still points there. That makes a lapsed business domain worth something to the wrong person.

You can ask the new holder to hand it back, but they don’t have to. Treat a domain your business has used for email as something you keep renewing even after you stop using it, at least until nothing depends on it.

How to never get here

1. Know the date. For .au names you can’t look it up publicly: auDA’s WHOIS policy says “creation, renewal and expiry dates will not be disclosed on the WHOIS service”. The date is in your provider’s dashboard. Put it in your calendar a month ahead.
2. Use a contact email that doesn’t depend on the domain. If reminders go to an address at the same domain, they stop arriving at the moment you most need them.
3. Keep that address current. Reminders sent to a former staff member or an old web designer help nobody. Check who the registrant is while you’re there.
4. Renew early, or for longer. You lose nothing by renewing ahead, and a multi-year term means fewer chances to miss one.
5. Make it somebody’s job. In most lost-domain stories, everyone thought someone else was handling it.

One more thing to watch: official-looking renewal notices from companies you’ve never dealt with. They’re covered in Keeping your domain safe, and in more depth in our guide to domain renewal scams in Australia.

Terms in this lesson

Expiry date

The day a registration period ends.

Renewal

Paying for another term before a registration expires, so you keep the name.

Licence

What you actually hold when you register a .au domain: the right to use the name for a set period.

Grace period

The window after a domain expires when the holder can still renew it.

Redemption period

For .com and similar endings, the 30 days after an expired name is deleted during which the old holder can still get it back, usually for a sizeable fee.

Pending delete

The last stage for an expired .com or similar name: it can no longer be renewed or restored, and in a few days it will be released for anyone to register.

Auto-renew

A setting that renews a domain for another term without you doing anything, charging a saved payment method.

Registrant

The person or organisation a domain is registered to.

Every term, in full, is in the glossary.

Sources

All read on 2 October 2026.

• How to renew your .au domain name (auDA): licence periods, renewing up to 90 days early, the 30-day grace period and what happens after it.
• WHOIS Policy (2025-11) (auDA): expiry dates aren’t shown in .au WHOIS.
• Expired Registration Recovery Policy (ICANN): renewal notices, the interruption of DNS after expiry, the 30-day redemption grace period and fee disclosure.
• EPP Status Codes (ICANN): the redemption period and pending delete statuses.