Is your business’ domain name about to expire? Don’t wait until the last minute to renew it! We’ve heard countless horror stories involving expired domain names, from massive financial losses to damaged branding and social media nuisances. Before any of these happen to you, we recommend renewing your domain name.
Your domain name is really important to your business as it’s the address your potential clients will type to find your website. If it’s easy to remember, resonates with your audience, and enhances your brand, it instantly boosts your credibility. A quality domain name attracts clients, while a bad one can send them running.
If you’re in the process of picking a domain name, we recommend choosing a short, branded, easy-to-type one. You can even add a keyword if it’s possible. Feel free to use a domain name generator to come up with fresh ideas.
The good news is, when you find the perfect domain name, you can keep it forever by taking steps to renew and protect it.
Choosing the right domain name is just the beginning, though. It’s also critical to select the ideal host for your website. Your hosting provider affects your website’s load speed — a factor that influences search engine optimization (SEO), conversion, and bounce rates. If your page load time exceeds three seconds, you can say goodbye to 57% of your site visitors.
Don’t worry if you didn’t get these components right on your first try. If your current host isn’t working out, you can renew your domain name with a different hosting provider. This article will serve as your guide for how to renew your domain name and how to change hosting providers.
A Guide To Renewing Your Domain Name
Many of our clients wonder if they own a domain name when they purchase it. The answer is a resounding no!
When buying a domain name, consider it a lease that you have to renew before it lapses. If you don’t, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will suspend and eventually cancel it. If this agency scraps your site, you lose all the information on it and any associated email addresses.
Now, if you miss your renewal date, a third party can buy it. When this happens, you can’t renew your domain name anymore, and you might not even have the option to buy it back.
Naturally, it’s better to renew your domain name than face the consequences of such a scenario. It could lead to revenue losses, a drop in site traffic, and a damaged reputation.
So, When Should You Renew Your Domain Name?
There’s no universal period for domains, but they often last anywhere between one and ten years. If you’re ready to renew your domain name, you can choose a longer lease so you won’t have to go through the renewal process every year.
In some cases, registrars contact organizations before a domain name expires. They typically will help you update your information, transfer your domain name, or move to a different registrar if you want.
So, How Do I Renew My Domain Name?
Renewing your domain varies slightly with different hosts. However, you often have two choices: auto or manual renewal. Whichever you choose, we guarantee that renewing before your domain expires will minimize business interruptions.
With an auto-renew option, you can select your preferred number of registered years and set reminders for your renewal.
On the other hand, you can also opt to renew your domain manually. You should find details like status and remaining days until expiry on your hosting platform.
Can I Transfer My Domain Name to a New Host?
Yes, absolutely! To register a domain name, you need a registrar or a host that offers such services. However, if your current host charges too much, lacks support options, or often experiences technical difficulties, you can always move to another one.
You need two things to transfer your domain name: an active domain and an account with your new host. Follow the steps below to complete this process.
Step 1: Remove Your Domain Lock
Many registrars and web hosts use a domain lock feature to tie your domain to a service until you disable it. This attribute allows you to protect your site from any unauthorized transfer attempts.
Luckily, disabling it is a simple process. All you have to do is log in to where you registered your domain and look for the unlock option.
Step 2: Initiate a Transfer
Log into your new host or registrar and find the option to transfer your domain. Usually, you can find it in your dashboard.
Your host will then ask you to confirm your new destination with an authorization code. Afterward, your new platform will begin the process.
Step 3: Verify the Transfer
When you initiate a transfer, you will receive an email asking you to confirm it. The message should contain your new domain and registrar. Once you click the confirmation link and signify your agreement, the process is almost complete.
After you transfer your domain, you won’t be able to do it again for at least 60 days. The exception to this rule is if you go back to your old registrar.
Step 4: Pay Your New Host for the Transfer
Most platforms allow free domain transfers but will require renewal fees afterward.
After payment, all you have to do is wait. Some registrars take days to complete this process, while others can do it in less than a day. When the transfer is complete, you can view your domain in your new host’s management screen.
Can I Renew My Domain Name After It Expires?
Yes, you can renew your domain name after it expires.
We’ll let you in on a secret. Forgetting to renew domain names is not as uncommon as you think. It happens to the best of us.
So when you’re facing domain expiration, don’t panic. You have a few days to save it.
With ICANN using the Expired Registration Recovery Policy, here are a few pointers to follow:
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Renewal grace period: Your domain name will be on hold up to 30 days after expiration. During this time, potential clients cannot access your website. If you renew your domain name by this time, you will only have to pay the standard fees.
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Restoration grace period: From day 31 to 60, your website is close to the brink of deletion. You can still renew your domain name during this time, but you will incur additional charges.
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Day 61: If you still haven’t renewed your website two months after expiration, it will be available for others to buy. Don’t let your renewal reach this point.
If you’re too busy to manage such tasks, we recommend setting your account to auto-renew. Doing so will help save your site from potentially catastrophic consequences.
Benefits of Renewing Your Domain Name
If you’ve established a solid customer base, they associate your business with your domain name. It’s part of your online authority. Losing your domain name impacts your relationship with your clients negatively.
Below are some reasons why it’s best to renew your domain name instead of changing it.
Protect Your Brand
We recommend renewing your domain name to protect your brand.
If you don’t do so, it becomes available on the market. Anyone can claim it — including your fiercest competitors. You don’t want any of them controlling your previous domain name.
Also, organizations often link their domain names to their social media accounts. Losing your domain name will disrupt the flow of traffic to your website and create uncertainty for your followers and subscribers.
Guarantee Higher Uptime
In the web hosting world, uptime means the amount of time your website is operational. Failure to renew your domain suspends all services connected to your account, including email addresses.
The longer your downtime lasts, the more visitors you lose. This scenario will leave search engines and consumers alike doubting your website’s authenticity. Renewing your domain on time will help to prevent all these challenges.
Preserve SEO Efforts
A parking page takes your domain’s spot when it expires, impacting your search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Your marketing team might need months to undo the damage that the expiration causes.
Search engines don’t check if your site is down, but they will crawl your site repeatedly. The longer the parking page stays, the more your search result rankings will drop.
Also, one of the risks associated with changing your domain name is your ranking. We recommend working with a professional if you don’t know how to change your domain name without damaging your ranking position.
Avoid Fraud
Domain name owners sometimes fall victim to scammers. When you become too busy to pay attention to your URLs, you may become vulnerable to con artists.
If you don’t renew your domain, you might find yourself dealing with official-looking notices sent via snail mail or email. The individuals behind the attacks will send fraudulent instructions and exorbitant renewal rates.
Sometimes, unsuspecting entrepreneurs pay the fines instead of dealing with an expired site. By the time they realize their mistake, the hustlers will be gone.
Elevate Your Site With a Trusted Web Hosting Company
Once you’ve renewed your domain name, it might be time to consider a new web hosting company for your site, like Hosting.com! Doing so can help you stand out in a sea of competition.
What makes Hosting.com so great? Check out some of the factors below.
Enhanced Security
We apply various best practices to ensure client safety.
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HackScan: 24/7/365 running on your account to block attacks BEFORE they can happen
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Reinforced DDos Protection: Our (distributed denial of service) DDoS defense solution provides high scale capacity, instant attack detection and mitigation. This improves the likelihood that your site will remain online during even the most sophisticated distributed denial of service attacks.
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Dual Hosting Firewall: Your Hosting.com account includes an overall network firewall with an additional server firewall to block unauthorized users and secure vulnerabilities. Your server's firewall deflects threats that manage to penetrate our network's firewall.
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Server Hardening: Hosting.com disables non-mission-critical server components to decrease potential server exploits. We further reduce potential exploits by maintaining the most current security patches and updates on your server.
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Plus much more that you can read about here!
Unmatched Support System
If your web host isn’t there for you 24/7/365, it’s time to reconsider your options. Recent statistics show that businesses lose an estimated $26.5 billion annually from IT downtime, making every minute online count. Hosting.com has a team of web gurus that are around all the time by chat, ticket system, and phone!
World-Class Speed
You should choose the best hosting plan for your business, even if it’s not the free kind. The speed of the remote server your host uses will affect the load time of every visitor that tries to access your site. Our Turbo plans from Hosting.com are built for speed. Limited occupancy, upgraded server hardware, advanced caching software, optimized configurations, and a variety of performance add-ons combine to give you one of the fastest web hosting experiences out there. Hosting.com Turbo’s enhanced performance and speed improves your user experience and reduces page load times to help you increase your conversion rates.
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Up to 20x faster page loads
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Handle up to 9x more traffic
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2x faster to first byte
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3x faster read/write speeds
Renew Your Domain With Hosting.com
Most of our clients have kept the same domain name for decades. Renewing your domain name can be the difference between impressive growth and massive losses — so don’t overlook this process.
At Hosting.com, we have the security, support, and speed you need to dominate the digital world. We’ve been empowering businesses of all sizes and industries with practical hosting solutions for almost 20 years.
For as low as $2.99 per month, you can enjoy a 99.9% uptime commitment, a dedicated guru crew, and 20X faster load speeds. Renew your domain name with us now to propel your business toward growth.
