Get alerts before a client's domain expires

A client's domain lapses when the renewal reminder goes to someone who left or the card on file expires, and the first you hear of it is a call saying the site and the email are down. OctoPing reads a domain's public registration record, so you can watch a domain you have no registrar login for. This guide sets up the warning, routes it to the people who can act on it and checks that it works.

What you need

• A site on the client's domain, monitored in OctoPing. A subdomain works, and OctoPing looks up the domain it belongs to.
• A role of Member, Admin or Owner to edit the site and its notifications.
• A person to send the warning to. That can be you, a renewals contact at your agency or both. The client can get it too, and a later section covers that.

Set up the warning

1. 1. Turn on the domain check

   New sites have WHOIS Registration switched on and it looks the domain up every week. To confirm, open the site, choose Edit and find the WHOIS Registration row. Check every offers 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month.

2. 2. Choose how early to warn

   In the same row, Alert days before expiry takes a number from 1 to 365 and starts at 30. Pick a window that leaves the client time to approve the payment, then choose Save Changes. From the moment the domain has that many days or fewer left, every lookup sends a warning until the domain is renewed, so a message someone missed comes back.

3. 3. Read the registration record

   Open the site's detail page and find the Domain Registration card. It shows the Registrar, the Creation Date, the Expiration Date and a Domain Validity timeline. Check that an Expiration Date is there. OctoPing counts down from that date, so a domain whose card shows no Expiration Date gets no warning. If yours is empty, contact support with the domain so we can look at it.

4. 4. Send the warning to the right people

   On the site's Notifications page, open the notification that should carry the warning in its edit dialog, or choose Add Notification to make one. An email notification takes several recipients, so a renewals contact can sit beside you. Then look at the Alert on checkboxes, because the labels are shorter than what they cover. A domain expiry warning follows Site goes down, so tick it. A change to the registrar, the registrant or the name servers follows Content changes.

5. 5. Send a test

   Choose Send Test on the notification. A test message should reach every recipient. It proves the channel works, and the expiry warning itself uses the same channel.

What the warning looks like

The subject names the domain and the days left, as in the example below. From 14 days left or fewer it also carries the label WARNING, and from 7 days or fewer the label URGENT. The body gives the dates and the registrar, so whoever reads it knows where to renew. The example is shortened, with the domain replaced.

Subject: ⚠️ Domain Expiring: https://client.example/ (211 days)

Website: https://client.example/
Status: Domain registration expiring soon

Days until expiry: 211
Expiration date: 2027-06-06
Registrar: NAMECHEAP INC

Please renew the domain registration before it expires to avoid losing the domain.

View details in OctoPing: <link to the site>

Send the warning to the client too

If the client is a contact on a status page that shows the site, they get the expiry warning too, from the page's name. With daily lookups, a contact still gets it at most once every 3 days. The client contacts guide sets one up.

Verify it works

• The Domain Registration card shows an Expiration Date and a Registrar.
• Send Test reaches each recipient.
• To see the real warning once, set Alert days before expiry above the days left, save, and wait for the next lookup. Choose the shortest Check every while you test, then set both back. The warning arrives with the days left in its subject.

If a client has several sites on one domain, each site looks the domain up and sends its own warning. Leave WHOIS Registration on for one of them and switch it off on the others, so the client's renewals contact gets one message and not three.