You do not lose your GoDaddy domain as soon as it expires. Expired domains are kept for up to 72 days before being deleted, and once they are erased, you can't get them back.
This article explores the GoDaddy domain life cycle to help you grasp what happens to your domain upon expiration and how to avoid domain expiration.
Your domain registration at GoDaddy will expire when your term length ends. The typical term length is between one and ten years. The expiration date starts counting the night your registration term ends. Losing your domain will impact your site and email connections.
At GoDaddy, when a domain name expires, it does not expire from the register instantaneously. Rather, it goes through multiple phases before being erased at last. We call this process the domain lifecycle.
Also, the length of the life cycle is sometimes dependent on the domain extension (top-level domains). For instance, country-code level domains have a special renewal requirement.
+1 Day: GoDaddy will try to auto-renew your domain, or you can manually renew it.
+5 Days: GoDaddy will once again try to auto-renew your registration. If it fails, your domain is parked. As a result, your website and email will stop working. However, you can still manually renew for the standard renewal fee.
+12 Days: GoDaddy will attempt to auto-renew your domain one last time.
+19 days: Your domain goes on hold, entering the redemption duration. You can renew your domain at the standard and applicable redemption fees here.
+26 days: The domain goes to auction.
+30 days: If there are no bids on the domain within 30 days, the domain will remain in your account, and you can renew it. If there are active bids in the auction, the domain leaves your account, and you can't renew it.
+36 days: The domain enters a final closeout auction where you can still redeem the domain with the additional cost if there's no pending purchase.
+41 days: The final closeout auction ends. You can still resume your domain.
+72 days: The domain is removed from your account and returned to the registry for deletion. You will have to wait till the registry has released the domain for a new registrant to register it.
GoDaddy will try to renew your domain automatically some days prior to its expiration date. Should this fail, they will try to renew the domain name multiple times throughout the grace term. However, this will only work if you set auto renewal and your credit card information is correct.
Suppose you fail to set auto renewal and also don't renew your registration manually once the grace phase passes and it enters the redemption period. In that case, they will require you to pay a fee of $80 plus the standard renewal price to recover your domain.
The auction process starts on day 26. Your domain will be placed on the domain auction platform owned by GoDaddy—GoDaddy Auctions. While it's in the auction, you cannot restore your domain if there's an active bid.
You can join the bid or try to place a backorder. Even if the bid fails, you can still recover your domain. However, if someone else wins the auction, you lose your domain ownership.
The auction stage lasts ten days and ends on day 36. If no bids or backorders are received within the auction phase, the auction is extended to a five-day closeout period. During this phase, the domain's price will continue to fall until it is sold or time runs out.
Your domain may have expired accidentally. In such a situation, your priority is to contact the customer service provider immediately to learn what stage your domain is in the cycle and what possibilities are available for reclaiming it.
Review this process to redeem your expired domain:
If you want to prevent domain expiration issues on GoDaddy in the future, do this:
Sign Up for Business Protection: The Ultimate Domain Protection policy gives eligible businesses an extra 90 days to retrieve their domain after it expires with no additional charges.
Set Up Auto Renewal: Set auto-renewal so GoDaddy will make sure your domain renews before it expires. This will relieve the stress of remembering the renewal dates of your domains by automating the payment process.
Update Your Contact Information: Update your contact details to receive alerts about if your domain has expired.
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