Domain Expired

What This Check Does

The Domain Expired check detects when your domain's registration has passed its expiration date. DNS Spy monitors WHOIS expiration data and raises a critical incident when the expiration date is in the past. This is the final stage — the domain is either in a grace period, a redemption period, or has already been released for re-registration.

Why It Matters

An expired domain means DNS stops resolving. Your website is unreachable, email delivery fails, and all services that rely on the domain — APIs, webhooks, authentication endpoints, CDN configurations — stop working. The longer the domain stays expired, the harder and more expensive recovery becomes.

Most registrars provide a grace period of 0–45 days during which you can renew at standard cost. After the grace period, the domain enters a redemption period (up to 30 days) where recovery requires a fee that can reach hundreds of dollars. After redemption, the domain is released for public registration — at which point it can be registered by anyone, including competitors or bad actors who may use it for phishing or spam targeting your former users.

Good vs. Bad Configuration

Bad Configuration

example.com expired 3 days ago. DNS resolution has failed. The website is down, email is not being delivered, and the team is scrambling to renew through the registrar's grace period process. Customer support tickets are flooding in.

Good Configuration

Even after expiration, the team was able to renew during the grace period before DNS resolution fully failed. The domain is restored, WHOIS reflects the new expiration date, and DNS Spy automatically resolves the expired domain alert.

How DNS Spy Monitors This

DNS Spy raises a critical incident immediately when WHOIS data shows an expiration date in the past. All configured notification channels are alerted. DNS Spy continues monitoring and will automatically resolve the incident once the domain is renewed and the WHOIS record reflects a future expiration date. Act immediately — time is critical once a domain has expired.