Registering a domain name gives you the right to that domain name for a limited and defined period of time. The trick is that to maintain ownership, you need to renew the domain name. And what could be easier than forgetting yet another administrative task that only comes around once a year? Still, beware that missing the renewal date could cause you to incur a significant and unexpected cost in your professional activity.
Your domain name, the basis of your online services
To meaningfully and usefully answer the question as to why you should renew your domain name, you first need to recognize that your domain name is the basis of all your online services in their entirety. When we talk about domain names, we reflectively think of a website’s address. But a domain name is also the basis of your email addresses. This double role can have serious repercussions on your professional activity if you forget to renew your domain:
- An interruption in business activity due to your website being offline, resulting in:
- a loss of business data
- a loss of faith from internet users
- An interruption in your internal activities due to your website being offline, resulting in:
- a loss of productivity
- a loss of confidence from your business partners.
It is, therefore, essential to renew your domain name on time to ensure that your services remain online. It only takes one very simple action that seems obvious, but gets missed with surprising frequency. This one mistake accounts for major setbacks even for large, multinational corporations.
Learn more about the domain name afterlife
How do you make sure to renew your domain name?
To make sure that you don’t miss a domain name renewal, Gandi, in our capacity as domain name registrar, sends you at least five email reminders to renew your domain name.
These notifications ensure that you’re aware of the expiration date of your domain name. But they do not guarantee the renewal of your domain name. That’s why Gandi has also implemented an automatic renewal system so that you don’t have to worry.
Activate automatic renewal for complete peace of mind
If you want to keep one or more domain names for the long run, automatic renewal should be part of your domain name portfolio management best practices.
By activating this option, domain name renewal is automatically launched 31 days before the expiration date (and up to 3 months before the expiration date for certain country-code top-level domains or ccTLDs). That way you don’t have to think about it!
You can activate automatic renewal for one or more domain names in just a few clicks. Our dedicated documentation guides you through the process.
Use your prepaid account to guarantee renewal
If activating automatic renewal is a smart move, ensuring that your prepaid account has sufficient funds to renew your domain name is even smarter.
For that, we’ve implemented a minimum balance mechanism that automaticdally refills your prepaid account with a predefined amount when your account falls below a certain balance. That way, when a transaction is launched automatically, the order goes through automatically without you having to add funds or otherwise intervene.
To activate this prepaid account:
- go to the “Billing” tab in your account
- then click on “Automatic payments”
- and click on “Manage” under “Prepaid account settings”
And in case there are any problems with your credit card (expired card, payment refused, etc.), we notify you automatically by email so that you can fix the problem and reactivate the automatic payments so that you can guarantee your domain name management in peace. The answer to the question of “How can I register a domain name for life?” has a completely different answer now!
Please feel free to contact our Customer care team if you have any difficulties activating any of these features or otherwise need help.
Tagged in Domain names
