Follow these two tips to avoid having the same thing happen to you.
I almost lost a good domain name due to expiration this week. I learned some lessons, so I’m recounting what happened to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
I won the domain name in a NameJet auction nearly a year ago and the domain was at Register.com. It’s a fairly good domain name; I had two different inquiries on the domain last year including one from a large company.
Yesterday I received a DomainTools registrant alert that showed that the domain changed from my company name to Perfect Privacy, LLC. That’s the proxy service for Web.com registrars Register.com and Network Solutions.
Concerned, I went to my Register.com account and saw that the domain expired three days ago.
I do not recall receiving any of the ICANN-mandated notices from Register.com about my domain expiring. This doesn’t mean they didn’t send them. Most email from Register.com lands in my spam box because they send so much promotional email–one per day!
These promotional emails often start with “Urgent” or “Alert” even when it’s not important. It’s just a sales pitch for search engine optimization. So it’s easy to overlook them.
Regardless of whether they sent the notices or not, here are two tips to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
1. Use an alert service like DomainTools or DomainIQ to get notifications when your Whois changes. Unfortunately, GDPR means your info isn’t always in Whois, but you can also track domain status changes that will alert you that your domain has expired.
2. Transfer domains you win in expired domain auctions to your main registrar on a regular schedule. For example, set up a once-a-quarter reminder on your calendar to transfer domains.