If a domain expires, it becomes inactive immediately, a parking page will be displayed, you may lose ownership rights, and all the services attached to it will no longer function, such are your website or email.
However, the registrar provide a limited grace period during which time you may renew the domain and regain full registrant rights to the domain. Each registry and also each tld has different rules for their grace periods. At the end of the grace period, the domain may be auctioned, deleted or go into redemption, and may eventually become available for others to register.
We highly recommend that you renew your domain before it expires. Likewise, we suggest you keep track of your domain expiration dates and renew well in advance to avoid unintentional down time or loss of the name. Courtesy emails are sent out 60, 45, 30, 15 and 7 days prior to expiration to warn you of the impending expiration. The registry also send you an alert after the domains has expired. Once you renew the domain, all previous settings will be recovered and the domain will be active usually within a few hours of the renewal.
The renewal period is always added to the end of the current registration period (for example, the new expiration date is the same whether you renew two months early or the day before expiration) so you will never lose time on your domain by renewing early.
Note once the domain is in redemption or extended redemption period, the registry can charge up to $350 fee, additional to the regular annual registration fee, to recover the domain name. If your domain is in this status you can contact us to arrange the payment to recover the domain.
