Emerging Business Systems Ltd.

Renewing Your Domain

When you first signed up for your domain, you may have signed up for 1 year, 2 years or 5 years. It is important that when you receive a notification from your Domain Register that you don’t let that bill slide. This is not a one time bill. If you don’t pay for the upcoming year(s), you can lose your domain and your website will go down. It is important to remember who your domain is through. There are a number of companies that send out notices for domain renewals that are 10 times the price – you don’t want to do that.

Registration Period

You can register a new domain name for 1 to 10 years. You will have to pay an annual fee, which means that if you register the domain for 5 years, you will have to pay 5 times the current annual fee. It can be an excellent way to save money if you believe that domain registration prices are likely to rise in the future. The domain name will expire on the purchase date from 1 to 10 years in the future.

Renewal Period

A domain name can be renewed at any time, but this has to happen before expiry. The renewal can extend your domain registration up to 10 years in the future. For instance, if your domain name still has 5 years remaining before it requires renewal, you can renew it at any time for an extra 1 to 5 years for a maximum of 10 years.

Automatic Renewals

It can be easy to forget that the domain name you registered a decade ago requires renewal, which is why domain registrars usually notify you via email that your domain needs renewing and most even offer an automatic renewal option. The registrar will automatically renew your registration upon expiry as long as you have a current payment method on file.

If you use the domain automatic renewals option, however, you will have to pay full retail price for every renewal. It is also important to ensure that the automatic renewal does not automatically include extra features or you could find yourself paying extra for domain renewal each year.

Final Thoughts

If your site goes down it can cost you plenty. We’ve seen some domains cost as much as $800 to get back. After a domain expires, it enters a grace period. In this period, the domain is disabled but it’s still possible to renew it. After a domain has passed through any applicable expiration grace period, the domain may go into redemption status. When a domain is in the redemption status, the registrar will apply a mandatory fee on top of the standard renewal price. The final renewal price will be the standard renewal fee plus the redemption fee.

Pay attention to your Domain and Hosting invoices. Your site depends on them.