Recovering a lapsed domain name

The first task is not recovery but diagnosis. A committee discovering that the club website has gone dark rarely knows whether the name expired last week or last year, and the two situations call for entirely different actions. Public registration data answers the question: it shows the registrar of record, the expiry date and a status field that reveals which stage the name is in. Reading it is straightforward once the format is familiar, and the method is set out in WHOIS and RDAP.

Three things are worth writing down before anything else is attempted: the registrar named in the record, the expiry date, and the status. If the record has disappeared entirely, the name has already been deleted and the situation is a different one, described later on this page.

When the name is still with its registrar

If the expiry date has just passed and the status shows the name held or suspended rather than in redemption, the fix is a renewal. The only real obstacle is access to the account, and in a volunteer organisation that obstacle is usually a person rather than a system: the account was opened by a former secretary using a mailbox that no longer exists.

Registrars deal with this constantly and have a documented process for it, which generally means proving the identity of the organisation and its connection to the registration. Useful evidence includes invoices addressed to the group, minutes recording the decision to register the name, constitutional documents, and correspondence showing the domain used officially over a period. Support requests that arrive with that material attached move considerably faster than those that begin with an assertion of ownership.

Redemption: one door only

Once the status shows the name in redemption, the position changes in a way that catches people out. The registration has been deleted at the registry and can be restored only through the registrar that previously held it. No other registrar can help, no marketplace can help, and the name cannot be transferred out of that registrar until it has been restored. Anyone offering to recover a name in redemption on behalf of a customer is, at best, going to make the same request to the same registrar.

Restoration is a formal request with a restore fee attached, charged in addition to the renewal. It has to be asked for explicitly, because registrars do not restore names automatically, and some require the request through a particular form or channel. Registrar deadlines are also sometimes shorter than the registry stage itself, so the request should go in immediately rather than at the end of whatever period appears in general guidance. The full sequence of stages is set out in what happens after a domain expires.

After the deletion

When redemption ends without restoration, the name passes through a final status in which nothing can be done, and is then deleted and released for registration. If nobody else wants it, it can simply be registered again as a new name, at ordinary price, by anyone, including its former holder. Checking availability at any registrar is the only step required, and doing it promptly matters because deletions are watched.

If the name has been taken, the former holder has no special standing. There is no priority, no waiting list and no right of first refusal. What existed before the lapse is not a legal claim but a practical argument, and it carries weight only in a negotiation.

Buying it back

A name registered by somebody else after a lapse falls into one of a few categories. It may have been caught by a service that registers deleted names for resale, in which case it will usually appear on an aftermarket listing within days. It may have been taken by a party with a genuine use for it. Or it may sit unused on a parking page, in which case the holder is likely to be open to an offer.

Names in the first and third categories are the ones a group can realistically buy back. Aftermarket listings, brokered sales and marketplaces such as Tappaya are where such names surface, and the mechanics of paying for one and receiving it safely are set out in buying a name somebody else holds. A first approach to a holder who has not listed the name needs considerably more care.

The one thing that should never be said in that first message is that the name was lost by accident and is urgently needed. It converts a routine sale into a negotiation with one side visibly desperate.

Not losing it twice

Recovery is a good moment to fix what caused the lapse, because the committee is paying attention for once. That means moving the registration into an account held by the organisation, setting the contact address to a mailbox more than one officer can open, paying from the group's own account rather than a personal card, switching automatic renewal on as a backstop, and recording the renewal date where the next committee will find it. Those arrangements are what stop the same thing happening again.