Problem
A client lost their domain name: what is still possible
“Lost” means different things depending on where the name has got to. The status published by the registry says which, in one word, and that word decides what remains possible.
Query the registry over RDAP and read the status before anything else. redemptionPeriod: recoverable, through the registrar that deleted it and nobody else. pendingDelete: nothing to be done, start planning the alternative. Already registered by someone else: this stopped being a technical problem, and it stopped being your decision.
Do this right now
Three moves. The first takes three minutes and stops you promising the client something that is no longer available.
Read the status, not the home page
3 minA parking page or an error message tells you nothing: they look identical at every stage. The registry status is unambiguous. Write it down, along with the date that accompanies it where there is one: that is your countdown, and it does not reset.
If it is in redemption, call the registrar that deleted it
30 minNot a different one: during the redemption period the registry prohibits transfers, and only the registrar that requested the deletion can restore the name. Open the ticket naming the operation — restore, not renewal — and ask in writing for the fee and the turnaround. The fee is published on their website; ICANN requires that.
If someone else has taken it, stop negotiating on your own
10 min to frame itA name re-registered by a third party is a legal and budget question, not a technical one. Depending on the client’s rights in the name, the route is a purchase negotiation or a dispute resolution procedure. Either way the client decides, with advice. Your job stops at establishing the facts and costing the fallback.
What the status allows you to promise
Read the status, then the matching branch. It contains exactly what you can tell the client, and nothing more.
What does the status published by the registry say?
- redemptionPeriod
Recoverable, for a restore fee.
The registry has disabled DNS and prohibited transfers. You have thirty days from the deletion, and one door: the registrar that deleted the name.
- pendingDelete
Nothing is possible.
The name has been through its thirty days of redemption. A few days later it is purged from the registry database and becomes registrable again under that registry’s rules.
- A different registrant, a live site
This is no longer a technical question.
The name has been re-registered. Depending on the client’s rights in it, this is a purchase negotiation or a dispute procedure. The decision and the budget belong to the client.
What is possible at each stage, and who acts
The third column is the one that matters: at most stages you are not the one acting. Knowing who to talk to saves a day.
- Expired, not yet deletedWhat is possibleAn ordinary renewal.Who actsYou, in the registrar account.
- Redemption period (30 days)What is possibleA restore, for a fee the registrar publishes.Who actsThe registrar that deleted the name, at your request.
- pendingDeleteWhat is possibleNothing.Who actsNobody.
- Back in the public poolWhat is possibleA fresh registration, if nobody is faster.Who actsAnyone, including you.
- Re-registered by a third partyWhat is possibleA purchase, or a dispute resolution procedure.Who actsThe client, with advice.
Sources: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy § 3 and the EPP status codes reference. Restore fees are set freely by each registrar; ICANN requires them to be published, not to be reasonable. For a French .fr the calendar is the same — thirty days of redemption — but it starts at the deletion requested by the registrar, not at the expiry date.
What you write to the client
The hardest message on this list, because it announces an unplanned expense. Put the cost in the same sentence as the solution, never after it.
Subject: Your domain name — action needed before [date]
Hello,
Your site’s domain name was deleted after it lapsed. It can still be recovered, but not indefinitely: the registry holds it in reserve for thirty days from the deletion, which means until [date]. After that the name becomes available to anyone.
Recovery has to go through the current registrar and is called a restore. It costs [amount], noticeably more than a renewal, and that price is set by them. I need your go-ahead to start it.
Once the name is restored, the site and the email addresses come back with no further work. I will then put automatic renewal back in place and point the reminders at an address somebody reads.
Let me know if I should proceed.
This message says three things and not one more: it is recoverable, there is a deadline, there is a price. Anything that sounds like a justification or an explanation of the cause can wait until tomorrow — today’s urgency is the go-ahead.
Why it happened
A domain name is not lost in one go. It passes through weeks of warnings, intermediate states and mandatory reminders before it is deleted. What failed is not a date: it is that nobody read the messages.
ICANN requires the registrar to send at least three: one month before the date, one week before, and one within five days of expiry. They go to the registrant address declared at the registry. When that address belongs to a director receiving two hundred emails a day, or to an employee who left, all three warnings arrive and nobody sees them.
The second factor is quieter: nothing notices that a domain has died until a human does. No alert, no log, no supervision — just a client calling. Weeks usually pass between the expiry and the call, and those are precisely the expensive weeks.
How to avoid it next time
Ask the registrar to set status locks on the domains that matter. clientTransferProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited and clientUpdateProhibited prevent an unwanted transfer, deletion or change. ICANN itself presents them as the basic protection for a name you care about.
Put a team-monitored address on the domain contact, never somebody’s personal inbox. And confirm once that registrar messages genuinely arrive there: an address that is valid on paper and an address that receives are two different things.
Finally, watch the date from the outside, at the registry. It is the one source that does not lie: a registrar dashboard can show auto-renew as active for months while the last charge failed.
Read the status and the date at the registry
The tool queries the registry over RDAP and returns the expiry date, the registrar and the declared name servers exactly as they are written there. No account, no usage limit.
What is missing is not a date, it is someone watching.
DomainVigil rereads the date and state of every domain at the registry, every day, for every client, and warns you at sixty, thirty and seven days — you, not the registrant. Five domains free, with no time limit.
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