What's worse than forgetting to renew your domain name registration? Getting your domain deleted as a result of not renewing and it having it registered by someone else. They may demand an exorbitant price to sell it back, or worse, sell it to one of your competitors, who takes all your customer traffic and email.
Many people fail to appreciate that domain name registration is for a set period of time. Most domains can be registered for 1 to 10 years. Once your registration term expires – or better yet, before it expires – you must renew it or risk losing it.
Although we send expiry notices multiple times prior to the domain expiry date, many customers leave the process of domain renewal to the last minute. This is not recommended, as other priorities can distract you from completing this simple and necessary process. Next thing you know, you've forgotten about renewing your domain altogether.
There are other factors that can also result in a losing a domain due to non-renewal. You might assume someone else in the organization will take care of the renewal. The registration contact person might have left the company, leaving the expiry notices to bounce back. Unfortunately, many people don't realize the true value of their domain name until they lose their registration.
The results of losing a valuable domain are costly, ranging from a relatively low cost of around $125 to redeem the domain at the registry (if it can be redeemed), to fees in the thousands of dollars charged by domain auction houses. Those vendors will price the domain based on a number of factors, including the amount of traffic coming into the domain, the number of years the domain was previously registered for, and the type of company that previously registered the domain. That last one opens the market to your competitors to secure the registration from you.
There is one simple and free solution to keep this nightmare from happening: Set up your domain to auto-renew. Our auto-renewal feature ensures your domain name will always be renewed before it expires as long as the billing info in your account is up to date. This feature adds another layer of protection not only to your domain, but also other services associated with your domain, such as web hosting and email, by preventing service interruptions that can cost you money.
Setting up auto-renewal is easy: simply log into your SiteControl account, select your domain(s), and enable the auto-renewal service. You have complete control over this feature and can opt out at any time.