Email Addresses on a Domain You Could Lose

Everything rides on one renewal

Every address at your business's domain works only while that domain is registered and pointing at your email service.

The mailboxes may live with Office 365, Google Apps for Work or your host. Other mail servers still find them by asking the domain where to deliver.

When the domain lapses, that answer disappears. Mail to you bounces, the website goes with it, and the business usually learns about it from a customer.

Domains are rarely lost to anything dramatic. They are lost to an expired card, an old inbox or a login nobody has.

How a domain gets lost

• An expired card on an automatic renewal nobody remembers setting up.
• Renewal notices going to someone who left years ago.
• Notices sent to the domain itself, which stop arriving once it lapses.
• An account in a personal name, a designer's or a former partner's.
• An unanswered verification email, after which the registrar suspends the domain.

The third is the trap. When the contact address is at the same domain, the final warnings that it is about to stop go to an inbox that stops with it.

What happens when it expires

The details vary by registrar and by domain ending, but the pattern is similar.

Most registrars stop the domain working soon after the expiry date, often replacing the website with a parking page. Email stops at the same moment.

For a while afterwards, renewal is usually possible at the normal price. Then comes a recovery period with a much larger fee, and then the domain is released for anyone to register.

The next owner can then collect whatever is sent to your old addresses, from invoices to password resets.

Auto-renewal and the card behind it

Automatic renewal is necessary but not enough, since it only works if the card on file is valid on the day.

Use a card in the business's name, not an employee's personal card, and put the card's expiry date in a calendar a month ahead.

Renew for several years at a time; every year paid ahead is a year in which nothing has to go right.

Put the domain's own expiry date in the same calendar, as a check that does not depend on the registrar's emails arriving.

Contact details that reach someone

The registrar holds a registrant name, an email address and a phone number. All three should still be true.

The registrant should be the business itself, by its legal name, since that decides who owns the domain in a dispute.

The email should reach at least two people. If the registrar allows a second contact, use an address at another domain, so warnings still arrive if the main one stops.

When a registrar asks you to confirm your email address, answer it. Domains whose contact details are not confirmed can be suspended.

Who controls the account

The registrant is who owns the domain on paper. The account holder is whoever can log in and change it. They are often not the same.

Web designers commonly register domains in their own accounts for convenience. The business may be the listed owner and still be unable to renew, update or move its own domain without them.

Put the account in the business's name, give at least two people a working login, and record it somewhere the business keeps.

A worked example

A payroll service with six staff runs payroll for several dozen small employers, most of whom email in their hours every second week.

Its domain had been registered eight years earlier by a former office manager, in her own registrar account, with automatic renewal on the firm's credit card of the time.

That card was later replaced, so the renewal was declined. Every warning was sent to the former manager's address at the firm's domain, a mailbox deleted when she left.

On the Thursday before a payday, clients' emails began bouncing and the website showed a parking page. The owner spent the day phoning clients for their hours.

Because the registrant on record was the business, the registrar accepted proof of identity and the domain was renewed within its grace period, at the normal price.

The account then moved into the business's name, with two staff holding logins, a current card, five more years paid, and a backup contact address at the firm's second domain.

Where the email actually lives

The domain is only the address. Mail is routed by records held by whichever company runs the domain's DNS, the internet's directory of where each domain's services live.

That is not always the registrar. If the records sit with a hosting account that is cancelled, email can stop while the domain itself is paid up.

Keep a copy of every record, including the ones that prove your mail is genuine. Restoring email is quick when they are written down.

A ten-minute check

Look up your domain in a public registration lookup, often called WHOIS. For most domains it shows the registrar and the expiry date.

Then log in to that registrar yourself. If you cannot, find out today who can.

Check that automatic renewal is on, the card is current, the registrant is the business, and the contact email reaches people who still work there.

When a web company holds the domain

Many businesses have their domain managed by their web company, and that can work well.

It works best written down: the domain registered in the business's name, an account the business can also reach, and the renewal date confirmed each year.

A good web company will be glad to put that in writing. It protects them too, since nobody wants to be the reason a client's email stopped.

The counter-case

A domain renewed years ahead, in the business's own account, with current contacts, needs only an annual glance.

A business whose email still runs on an internet provider's address has a different problem, about owning the address at all, and should solve that first.

And a brand-new domain is the easiest case, since it can be set up properly from the start.

For everyone else, put the domain on auto-renewal with a business card, keep the contacts current, and know exactly who controls the account.

Before the weekend

1. Look up your domain's registrar and expiry date.
2. Log in to the registrar account yourself.
3. Turn on automatic renewal with a business card.
4. Change the contact email to a shared address.
5. Add a backup contact at another domain.
6. Renew for several years at once.
7. Write down who has access and where.

Step two is the one that tells you where you stand. If you cannot log in to the account that controls your domain, you do not control your own email.

Which extra domains are worth renewing alongside the main one is covered in typo domains worth owning.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.