Don't let your domain expire...

Domains can be tricky to renew once they have expired! When a domain expires, there is a 30 day Grace Period to renew with the registrant. After this, it goes into a Redemption period of 30 more days whereby only the registrant can re-activate it and renewal may cost substantially more than a typical domain registration. I've heard of some renewals costing upwards of $150 dollars during the redemption period.

After the 30-day redemption period the domain enters a 5-day Pending Delete period. When a domain is in the Pending Delete period, no one is allowed to renew the domain and it can't be registered. After the 5-day Pending Delete period, the domain is released back into the public pool of available domain names enabling anyone to register it.

Another note, many of the BIG hosting companies are resellers that work with other companies to manage their domains. For example, Yahoo! is a reseller for MelbourneIT and Google Apps is a reseller for Godaddy or Enom. So, if you try to renew a domain after it has expired and it is handled by a reseller, you will most likely need to deal with the domain registrar directly. Also, many of these big hosting companies can be difficult to reach with domain renewal problems.

To avoid any trouble, DON'T LET YOUR DOMAIN EXPIRE!!