Confused about when your domain expires and when you need to renew it? You’re in the right place! At Epik, we try to streamline the process to make it easy to renew. To better understand how domain life cycles operate across the industry, check out our article, What is the Life Cycle of a Domain?
A Guide for Domain Owners:
Registration & Transfer
When you register a domain, it’s active for at least one year and up to ten years for most TLDs.
We offer a wide range of promotions on gTLDs for first-year registrations, so if you’re looking for inspiration or exploring new domain ideas, it’s a great place to start. Click Here to check them out!
If you transfer a domain from another registrar to us, you’ll get the remaining time from your old registrar plus an extra year upon transfer. Transfers involve a payment that extends the active status of your domain by another year.
Note: Some gTLDs and ccTLDs have special pricing due to their premium status, which can extend the domain’s registration upon renewal
Renewals
As your domain’s registration period nears its end, we’ll send you emails reminding you to renew it, or notifying you of automatic renewal that will be happening.
- Automatic renewals are processed 14 days before the expiration date. We’ll also send you an email reminder that your domain is set to auto-renew, in case you want to make changes
- With manual renewal, we’ll send six reminder emails to the email address on file, starting three months before your domain expires.
Renewing your domain for another year involves a payment at our current renewal price.
You can renew for multiple years, but you can’t exceed a total of ten years.
Note: Renewals are non-refundable
What Happens When a Domain Expires
Expired domains
Epik offers a 30-day grace period after a domain expires, during which you can renew it. without any additional fees.
If not renewed, it’s removed from your account on day 30 from expiration at 10PM Pacific, , and may go to a reverse auction on Name Liquidate by day 33 from expiration, where you can still redeem it for an additional fee. (If you need to redeem your domain, go to the next box below.)
Around day 43 from expiration, if not sold on Name Liquidate, the domain will the Redemption Grace Period (RGP) for up to 30 days, during which redemption is still possible. After RGP, it enters PendingDelete for 3–5 days before being released for public registration. Domains in PendingDelete cannot be redeemed. All Redemption fee are here
Eventually, any expired domains that aren’t renewed, that domain name is sent to NameLiquidate, for a seven-day auction. This runs roughly a few days after the grace period is over and the domain is not renewed. If the name is sold at NameLiquidate, the new owner gets the name, pays a renewal as well, and this flow is complete for the name.
Redeeming an Expired Domain
If the previous owner wants to redeem the domain after day 30—even while it’s listed on NameLiquidate and the auction is still active on NameLiquidate—we can facilitate this for a redemption fee plus the renewal cost. However, if the domain has already been sold on NameLiquidate, it cannot be reclaimed. If the domain goes unsold, it enters the Redemption Grace Period, during which you can still redeem it by paying the redemption and renewal fees.
NameLiquidate
NameLiquidate.com is a reverse auction platform for expired domains that starts no later than day 33 after expiration, following the 30-day grace period. Domains are auctioned for 7 days (168 hours), with a starting price of $999 that drops hourly until it reaches $9.
Buyers pay the current auction price plus the renewal fee.
While a domain is listed, the owner can still redeem it through their account. However, if someone buys it on NameLiquidate first, that sale takes precedence, per Epik’s Registrant Agreement (Section 3(C)).
When a domain sells, Epik takes a 9% commission, and the remaining 91% goes to the original owner as In-Store Credit—like “found money” that cannot be cashed out. These funds can be applied toward other Epik services like registrations, renewals, hosting, migrations, web design, and more.