A Monday morning phone call
A client calls at nine: their website is down and their email is bouncing. The developer checks and finds the domain expired over the weekend. It was registered by the agency years ago, on a registrar account set up by a founder who has since left, with auto-renew charging a card that expired. The renewal notices went to his old email address.
The domain is recovered, but the client lost a morning of email, and their confidence in the agency took a knock. Afterwards, the studio owner asks a simple question nobody can answer: how many client domains do we hold, where, and when do they expire?
Why domains slip through
- Domains were registered at different times, at different registrars, by different people.
- Registrar accounts have renewal notices going to old or personal addresses.
- Auto-renew depends on payment cards that expire or are cancelled.
- Some domains are in the client's name, some in the agency's, and it is not recorded which.
- SSL certificates on some older setups renew separately and can also lapse.
Domain management is an afterthought at most studios because it only matters on the day it fails.
What a lapsed domain costs
The client's website and email stop. Depending on the registrar's rules, recovering an expired domain can cost extra and take time, and in the worst case the domain can be lost. The client's trust in the agency is damaged, and a lapsed domain is exactly the kind of story clients tell other businesses. Staff spend the day on recovery instead of project work.
The domain register we build
- Domains are read from each of your registrar accounts through their APIs where available, or from exported lists, into one register.
- Each domain is linked to its client, with who is the registrant, where DNS is hosted, where email is hosted and who pays for renewal.
- Expiry dates and auto-renew status are refreshed regularly. Domains with auto-renew off or approaching expiry are flagged.
- SSL certificates on client sites are checked for expiry directly from the live site, whatever issued them.
- Alerts go to a shared agency address and to a named person, with plenty of notice, not to whoever registered the domain.
- Payment methods on registrar accounts are listed with their expiry dates, so an expiring card is replaced before it causes a failed renewal.
- The register records any domains that are due to transfer to the client, and tracks the transfer.
| Recorded per domain | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Registrar and account | Knowing where to log in |
| Registrant | Who legally holds the domain |
| Expiry and auto-renew | The main failure point |
| DNS and email host | What breaks if it lapses |
| SSL expiry | A separate way the site can fail |
| Who pays | Agency, recharged, or client direct |
Whether domains should be registered in the client's name or yours is a policy decision, often worth discussing with your adviser. The register makes the current position clear either way.
Knowing where every domain is
The owner opens the register and sees every client domain, grouped by registrar. A handful have auto-renew off, one registrar account has an expiring card, and several domains are still in the agency's name for clients who asked for ownership. Each gets an owner and a date. From then on, renewal alerts arrive to the shared address with notice to act, and nobody's Monday starts with a dead website.
Could a domain lapse on your watch?
- Client domains are spread across several registrar accounts.
- Renewal notices go to people who have left or personal addresses.
- Nobody can list every domain you hold and its expiry date.
- Auto-renew relies on cards that may have expired.
- It is unclear which domains are in your name and which in the client's.