What happens when your hosting plan expires

Websites rarely go down because of hackers. A lot of the time it is something much more boring: a renewal nobody noticed. The card on file expired, the reminder email went to an old address, or the person who set it all up has moved on.

This is what usually happens when hosting, a domain or a certificate expires. The exact timelines depend on your provider, so treat everything here as a general pattern and check your own provider's terms.

When the hosting plan expires

Warning emails. Most providers send reminders before and after the due date. These often go to a single address, which is easy to miss.
A grace period. Some providers keep the site running for a short time after the due date. Others do not.
Suspension. The site goes offline. Visitors see an error or a parked page. Email hosted with the same plan may stop too.
Deletion. If it stays unpaid, the provider may eventually delete the files, databases and backups. After that, there may be nothing to restore.

The important point: suspension is often fixable by paying. Deletion often is not.

When the domain expires

Your domain name is separate from your hosting, and it is often registered with a different company. If it expires:

The website and any email address using the domain can stop working.
Many registrars give a grace period during which you can still renew at the normal price.
After that, there is often a redemption period where recovery is possible but costs more.
Eventually the domain can be released, and someone else can register it, along with the traffic and links it used to receive.

You can look up a domain's expiry date with our domain expiry checker. Domain data is best effort, so confirm it with your registrar.

When the SSL certificate expires

An SSL certificate is what puts the padlock in the browser. Many hosts renew certificates automatically, but if renewal fails, browsers show a full-page security warning and many visitors will leave. The site is technically up, but it looks broken or unsafe. Check yours with the SSL expiry checker.

How to avoid it

List every renewal. Hosting, domains, certificates, email, plugins and tools. Include the date, the price and who pays. The renewal spreadsheet template is a quick way to start.
Use more than one contact address, and make sure at least one is a person who will actually read the email.
Keep the payment method current. An expired card is one of the most common causes of a lapse. Note the card's expiry date next to the services it pays for.
Turn on auto-renew, but do not rely on it alone. Auto-renew fails when payments fail.
Set reminders early, at 30, 14 and 7 days before the date. That gives you time to fix a payment problem.
Keep backups somewhere else, so a lapse never costs you your only copy.
If you work for someone else, write down who owns each account and how to reach them. Handovers are where renewals get lost.

A calm way to keep track

This is the problem Traqeet was started to solve: a server went down because a hosting plan expired, and nobody had the date. Traqeet is being built to keep every renewal, from streaming to servers, in one place and warn you early. You can join the waitlist to hear when it launches.

In the meantime, put the dates in a list today. It takes ten minutes and can save a website.