// renewal reminders
reminders that arrive early enough to do something.
Most renewal alerts reach you a week out, when your only option is to pay. Ours start at 90 days — with the price you are about to pay and the cheapest alternative in the same message.
a reminder is only useful if you can still act on it
Seven days before expiry, the only realistic move is to renew where you are, at whatever your registrar charges. Ninety days out you can check what the renewal costs elsewhere, unlock the domain, request an auth code and complete a transfer — which saves the difference and adds a year to the expiry rather than replacing it.
That is the entire reason the first alert lands at 90 days and carries the price comparison inline. Knowing a domain expires soon is a reminder. Knowing it expires soon and renews for less somewhere else is a decision.
what each reminder tells you
- Which domain, and exactly when — the registry’s date, which is the one that decides when it lapses, not a registrar’s internal billing date.
- What you will pay at your current registrar.
- The cheapest registrar we track for that TLD, and the annual difference — see the full registrar ranking for how wide that gap gets.
- Whether it is worth moving — for one domain with a small gap, usually not. Across a portfolio it adds up.
where reminders come from matters
Owndle reads expiry dates directly from each TLD’s authoritative registry over RDAP. That has two practical consequences: reminders keep working for domains in accounts you have lost access to, and the date is the real one rather than a copy that could be stale.
It also means there is nothing to connect. No registrar API keys, no OAuth, no read access to your billing. Paste a list of domains and it works.
the failure this is actually for
Almost nobody loses a domain on purpose. They lose it because a card expired, a billing address changed, the renewal receipt went to spam, or auto-renew was silently switched off by a transfer. Auto-renew reports success right up until it does not — the common ways it fails are worth ten minutes of your time.
An independent reminder is the check that the automation actually fired. That is a different job from the automation itself, which is why having both is not redundant.
questions people actually ask.
How do I set up domain renewal reminders?
Import your domains — paste a list, upload a CSV, or connect Cloudflare — and reminders are on by default at 90, 30, 7 and 1 days before each expiry. There is nothing per-domain to configure. The free tier covers ten domains with no card.
Do reminders work for domains at any registrar?
Yes. Expiry dates are read from each TLD's authoritative registry over RDAP rather than from your registrar account, so a reminder fires whether or not you still have working credentials for wherever the domain lives.
Why not just rely on my registrar's own emails?
Because they go to whichever address was on the account when you registered, which for an old domain is often an inbox nobody reads. They also arrive from the company being paid, so they tell you the price and not whether it is a good one.
Can I get reminders by SMS or Slack?
Today reminders arrive by email and push notification through the iOS app and web push. SMS and Slack are not live yet — we would rather say so than list channels that do not exist.
What if a domain is already past its expiry date?
It is usually still recoverable. Domains move through a grace period where you can normally renew at the standard price, then a redemption period where recovery costs substantially more, then pending delete where it is gone. Owndle shows which stage a domain is in.
// stop checking one at a time
set it up once, forget it deliberately.
Import your domains and reminders are on by default at 90, 30, 7 and 1 days — with renewal prices attached. Free for ten domains, no card.
start free — 10 domains →// no card · magic-link sign-in · alerts at 90/30/7/1 days