Renew only through the company where your domain is registered, which a public lookup will confirm. Notices from anyone else are sales offers, and paying one may start a transfer or buy nothing at all.

An invoice that is not an invoice

The envelope looks official. Inside, a notice shows your domain name and its expiry date, a price list for renewing over several years, and a form to send back with a cheque.

The sender is a company nobody at the business has heard of. Few people notice, because the domain name and the date are both correct.

That is the design. The name and date come from public records, and everything else is laid out to look like a bill someone forgot to pay.

Email versions arrive more often. Some put your domain and a date in the subject line and admit, only in the last paragraph, that they sell search engine submission rather than renewals.

Others claim a firm overseas has applied to register your name in its own country's domain, and urge you to buy those addresses first.

Reading the notice in front of you

The fifth settles it. A genuine renewal never needs to say it is not an invoice, and it never asks permission to move your domain anywhere.

Where they get your details

Every domain has a public registration record, usually called the WHOIS record. It shows the company the domain is registered through, the expiry date, and often the owner's name, mailing address and email.

Mailing lists are built from those records, which is how a letter from a stranger knows your expiry date to the day.

Some registrars offer a privacy service that replaces the owner's details with its own, which cuts down the letters considerably.

The same public record is also the quickest way to check a notice.

Checking with the registrar

Look up your domain in a WHOIS search, which most registrars and many free sites offer. The record names the registrar: the company your domain is actually registered through.

A real renewal notice comes from that registrar, or from the web company or host that arranged the registration on your behalf.

It refers to an account you can log in to. It does not ask for a cheque payable to a company you have never heard of.

When in doubt, use no link or phone number from the notice. Log in to your registrar account the usual way, or ask whoever manages your domain, and check the expiry date there.

The real risk is the notice you ignore

With the postal letters, payment is often treated as permission to move the domain to the sender, at a price well above the normal one.

Moving a domain normally needs a code from the current registrar as well, so sometimes the transfer never happens and the money buys nothing. Either way, the real registration has not been renewed.

That is the part people miss. Someone pays the letter, believes the domain is taken care of, and ignores the genuine reminder when it comes.

When the domain expires, the website and every email address on it stop working on the same day.

A worked example

A two-person landscape architecture practice in the Okanagan had a portfolio site and email on its own domain. The domain still sat in the registrar account of the web designer who built the site.

In the spring a letter arrived with the domain name, an expiry date in July and a five-year renewal price. The partner who keeps the books paid it by cheque and thought no more about it.

In July the real registrar's reminders went to the designer's old email address, which nobody read any more. The domain expired. The site went dark, and contractors' emails about drawings bounced.

The designer recovered it within the grace period most registrars allow after expiry. The cheque had bought nothing.

The lasting fix was ownership. The domain moved into an account in the practice's name, with both partners as contacts, auto-renewal on, and a note in the bills folder describing what real notices look like.

Who should receive the real notices

The registration record carries contact addresses, and renewal reminders go to them. Check that they belong to the business, not to a designer, a former employee or a personal account someone stopped reading.

Use an address someone reads every week, ideally on a different domain from the one being renewed. If the domain lapses, email on it stops, and any warning sent there goes nowhere.

Register the account itself to the business, and make sure the owner can find the login without help.

And put the expiry date in the business calendar a month ahead, whoever else is watching it.

Let the real renewal look after itself

Switch on automatic renewal at your registrar, then check the card it charges. Automatic renewal on an expired card renews nothing.

With it running, a letter asking you to renew is easy to set aside, since the real renewal does not need your help.

A rule for whoever pays the bills

The person who pays the bills is often not the person who knows what a registrar is. Tell them the name of the company that really holds the domain.

One rule covers it: domain renewals are never paid from a letter or an email. They are checked first with whoever manages the website.

Keep one of the sales letters on file as an example. It makes the next one easy to spot.

The counter-case

Some genuine notices do come from names you will not recognise. A domain registered by a web company or host may renew through them, under a brand that is not the registrar's own.

That is why the answer is to check rather than discard everything unfamiliar. The WHOIS record, or one call to whoever built the site, settles it in minutes.

Otherwise: renew only through the registrar you can log in to, and never from a letter.

Before the next letter

  1. Look up the registrar in a WHOIS search.
  2. Find the login for that account.
  3. Read the contact addresses on the record.
  4. Replace any address nobody reads.
  5. Switch on automatic renewal there.
  6. Put the expiry date in the calendar.
  7. Keep one sales letter as an example.

Step four is the one to do today, because a domain whose real reminders go to a dead address will lapse however carefully the sales letters are ignored.

When the domain itself no longer suits the business, the question becomes the one in a domain name the business has outgrown.

Frequently asked questions

Why do these letters know my expiry date?

Every domain has a public registration record showing its registrar and expiry date, often with the owner's name and address. Mailing lists are built from those records.

How can I tell a genuine renewal notice?

It comes from the registrar named in your domain's WHOIS record, or from the web company or host that arranged it, and it points to an account you can log in to.

Does paying the letter renew my domain?

No. Payment is often treated as permission to transfer the domain to the sender at a higher price, and sometimes buys nothing at all. The real registration stays unrenewed.

What is the biggest risk?

Believing the domain is renewed after paying a letter, then ignoring the genuine notice. When the domain expires, the website and email stop working together.

Which email should get the real notices?

One the business reads every week, ideally not on the domain itself, because if the domain lapses that mailbox stops and the warnings go nowhere.

Are all unfamiliar senders fake?

No. Domains are often registered through resellers, so a real notice may come from a name you do not know. Check the WHOIS record before paying or discarding it.

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.

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