If a registrant does not renew their domain name with the registrar, the domain will expire following a grace period. Expired domains may be auctioned off by the registrar. A variety of things can happen to a domain once it expires. It can be renewed by the registrant, be purchased at auction, return to the registry (the primary database for domain names), or become subject to domain squatting. Before any of those things happen, the party who was leasing the domain (the registrant) will usually have opportunities to buy back the rights to use their expired domain name. However, it’s much simpler to renew the domain name before it expires. Learn more in the Cloudflare Learning Center.
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