When the domain expires, the site and email stop.

What stops working

• Website: visitors get an error saying the address does not exist.
• Email: sending servers cannot find the MX record, report an error and usually return a delivery failure notice. Outgoing mail also suffers, because receivers cannot read SPF and DKIM for a domain that does not exist.
• Contact forms and online orders that depend on the same domain.
• Certificate renewal, because the issuer cannot validate a domain that does not resolve.
• Password resets for every account tied to an address on that domain, including the registrar account.

The first hour

• Check the expiry date, status and registrar in WHOIS. For .rs domains use the RNIDS WHOIS search.
• Contact the registrar, not RNIDS. If you have the account, renew and pay right away.
• Without account access, find the registrant and the administrative contact and ask them to contact the registrar.
• After renewal, check the site, certificate, MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Cached DNS answers can keep the error visible to some visitors for a while.
• Ask important senders to send their messages again. Mail rejected during the outage does not arrive later.

Deadlines for .rs

• After expiry the registrant has a 30-day grace period to renew.
• Renewal in that period counts from the expiry date, not from the payment date.
• After 30 days the name is deleted from the registry and anyone can register it.

A deletion requested by mistake can be revoked within 7 days. The same rules apply to the Cyrillic .срб domain.

Deadlines for .com and other generic domains

ICANN sets the general rules and the registrar sets the exact deadlines. Under the Expired Registration Recovery Policy:

• the registrar sends at least two reminders before expiry, roughly one month and one week before, and one more within 5 days after expiry if the domain is not renewed;
• if the registrar deletes the domain 8 or more days after expiry, the domain must be taken out of DNS for the last 8 days before deletion, while it can still be renewed;
• after deletion, generic registries have a 30-day redemption period in which the deleting registrar can restore the domain.

Keep it from happening again

Turn on automatic renewal at the registrar, with a payment method that will not expire before the domain, and keep a notification address that someone reads, on another domain or with a backup address.

Register for several years, up to ten in advance, and turn on Secure mode and domain locking against unwanted changes.

.rs domain registration · Check DNS records · SSL certificate renewal