Domain expiry monitoring
Find out weeks ahead that your domain is expiring — not the day after.
An expired domain is the one outage you cannot fix by restarting a service. It takes down everything at once: website, API, email, any login that goes through your domain. And it gives no warning — the registrar's reminder lands in the mailbox of a colleague who left two years ago, or the card on file has expired. A domain expiry monitor reads the real expiry date from the registry and warns you in time, whether or not any email ever arrives.
How it works
UptimeAlien queries your domain's expiry date over RDAP, straight from the responsible registry server — the official successor to WHOIS. The monitor turns “degraded” once the remaining time drops below the warning window you set, and “down” once the domain has actually lapsed. That way it nags early and loudly instead of waking you once, too late.
When to use it
- Production domains carrying website, API and mail at the same time
- Domains managed from a shared company account
- Inherited projects where nobody knows when the domain runs out
- Brand and typo domains that only ever redirect
- As a second line of defence next to registrar reminder emails
What you get
Registration expiry date, days remaining and the incident history.
Example
acme.com — warn 30 days before expiry
Certificate expiry and domain expiry are two different things
These two get confused constantly, and the confusion is expensive. A TLS certificate expires every 90 days and usually renews itself; when it doesn't, browsers show a warning page — annoying, but fixed in minutes. A domain registration expires after years, and what follows is a chain you don't control: resolution is switched off, then a redemption period with three-figure restore fees begins, then the domain drops and is grabbed by domain traders within seconds. UptimeAlien keeps a separate monitor type for each, because they need different warning windows and carry very different urgency.
Why the registrar's reminder email isn't enough
Registrars send expiry notices to the address on record. In practice that address is often a distribution list nobody reads, the mailbox of someone who has left, or an address on the very domain in question — which becomes circular the moment mail delivery is the first thing to break. Add spam filters and registrar migrations that lose contact details along the way. A monitor depends on none of that: it asks the registry and alerts through your own channels.
Which extensions are supported
Every generic extension such as .com, .net, .org, .dev or .app is required to publish its expiry date over RDAP, as are many country extensions including .fr, .uk, .nl and .pl. It is not possible for several country extensions that withhold expiry dates for privacy reasons — among them .de, .at, .ch, .eu, .be, .es and .io. DENIC does answer RDAP queries for .de, but deliberately omits the expiry date. For those extensions we stop you from creating the monitor at all, rather than handing you one that stays permanently red.
Frequently asked questions
What is domain expiry monitoring?
It regularly asks the responsible registry when your domain registration runs out and warns you a chosen number of days ahead — independently of your registrar's reminder emails.
How is it different from the SSL monitor?
The SSL monitor watches the TLS certificate, which expires every few months and usually renews itself. This one watches the domain registration itself, which expires after years and can then only be recovered with considerable effort and cost.
Does it work for .de domains?
No. DENIC does not publish an expiry date for .de at all, not even over RDAP. The same applies to .at, .ch, .eu, .be, .es and .io among others. No domain expiry monitor can be created for those extensions — you get a clear message instead of a monitor that could never work.
What warning window makes sense?
Considerably more than for a certificate. Thirty to sixty days is common, because renewing a domain can involve payment approvals, registrar access or internal sign-off — things that stretch across holidays.
Where does the data come from?
Straight from the relevant registry's RDAP server, resolved through IANA's official bootstrap registry. No third-party service sits in between where it could read your lookups.