Registering domains on our clients behalf

We have had several of our customers over the years managing domain names in their own Registrar accounts (NetworkSolutions.com, Godaddy.com, Register.com, NameCheap.com, etc.) and what we have found, a large number of our customers have let their domain names expire, rendering their website down and having to buy back their own domain name.

Examples include

1. Domain Renewal Date Expires. Domains are typically renewed for 1-10 years at a time. When the domain approaches 30 or 60 days to your expiration date, your domain name registrar will send you a email renewal notice letting you know your domain is about to expire and to renew it. A large number of customers put this on the back burner or procrastinate, and when the expiration date passes, the domain and website will go down on the expiration date.

2. Auto Renewal Checked but Credit card has expired. You may have auto-renal checked in your account, but as the 30 day notice comes, you will get a email notice stating to update your credit card.

3. Junk Mail/Spam Filter. You may not get the notices because of your email filter and your domain/website will go down.

We have seen it too many times where our clients registered the domain name and manage it themselves, only to have the website go down on any given day. It’s about this time we get the phone call and we find our clients asking us why their website is down or even pointing a finger at us. It’s about this time, we dig into the situation, find the issue, solve the issue and then have to bill our client for the time spent solving something so simple.

Case Study 1

Here's a example of what you will see if your domain name expires. This example is a former client that let the name fieldandfly.com expire because of failure to renew the name. Notice up top where it says "Buy This Domain". Yes, that means now you will have to buy it from a new owner since they let it expire. Be prepared to pay anywhere from $500-$800 dollars for it too. That's right. Something so simple can turn into a nightmare really quick.

Case Study 2

Here's another example where a customers domain expired, they thought the website went down and it turns out they didn't get the emails because they don't check their secondary email anymore (ie. Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) since it was a old email address in the Godaddy system. This happens all the time. What happens then? If the domain goes past the cancellation phase, then with Godaddy they put it up for auction if they are the registrar of the domain name. Now we are forced to help the client get the domain name on a auction. Here's one that we got lucky to get back for only $51 + $17.99 registration. Total of $68.99 not bad. However, this could have cost hundreds or even thousand of dollars. Look at the estimated value below. Everything is what one person is willing to pay for it.

SEO Reasons

Another reason you do not want your domain name to expire is, you may have 100's of links pointing to your domain name. Sure you can just go register a new .com name, but now you have lost all of the traction in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Basically, you are starting from square 1. Yes, you may have been on the 1st page in Google, but not anymore. The only way to show back up is to buy back the domain name and deal with it. The hundreds of dollars may be worth it when it comes down to it.

Control

You may ask yourself, I don’t know if I want 3plains to have control of our domain name? Yes, this is a common question. However, we have no interest in your domain name. As part of our Terms of Service section 16.13 (https://www.3plains.com/legal/terms/) we state "The domain name 3plains registers is owned by the registrant and not owned by 3plains. 3plains only manages the domain name in 3plains's domain account as a managed service to make it easier on the Client." If you decide to leave 3plains, we will simply transfer your domain name back to your new service provider or another registrar account you provide per our Cancel Service process.

Final Notes

We have been building websites for over 10+ years and we have seen too many domain name horror stories where customers have to buy back their own domain name for hundreds of dollars because of a domain name expiration.

Last Updated: 2021-01-01