# Why did my domain expire or fail to renew?

> Renewal opens 45 days before expiry and closes one day before, with no grace period afterwards. Pre-warmed domains cannot be renewed at all, by design.

**Renewal is open from 45 days before the expiry date until one day before it, and Reply adds no grace period once that date passes, although the registrar still allows one. Pre-warmed domains cannot be renewed at all. Payment is taken before the renewal is requested from the provider, so a charge can appear for a renewal that did not complete; the expiry date tells you which happened.**

_Status: Reviewed – written against Reply's product documentation on 2026-09-22, not yet confirmed against the running product._

## Quick fix

1. Read the expiry date on the domain. Renewal runs from 45 days before that date until one day before it; outside those dates there is no renewal to take.
2. Treat the date on screen as possibly out of date. Reply refreshes it from the provider, and a refresh that does not succeed leaves the older date showing.
3. If no renewal option appears at all, check whether the domain arrived as part of a pre-warmed package. Those run to the end of their term and cannot be extended.
4. If you were charged and the domain did not renew, note the date of the charge and stop there; a second attempt is a second charge.
5. If the domain has already lapsed, move the affected sequences onto mailboxes on a domain you still hold. Sending from a domain that was taken down does not resume.

Didn't work? [Contact Reply support](https://support.reply.io/); the team can check your account directly.

## Symptom

The expiry date on a purchased domain has passed, or a renewal you started did not complete. Mailboxes on that domain stop sending, and sequences that were using them stall while sequences on other domains carry on.

## Why a renewal does not happen

| Cause | How it shows up | Where to look |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **You are outside the renewal window** | No renewal offered, or a renewal request refused | The expiry date: the window runs from 45 days before it to one day before |
| **The expiry date shown is out of date** | The domain looked safe and expired anyway | Whether the date has moved at all recently |
| **The domain is pre-warmed** | No renewal option exists on the domain | Whether it arrived as a package with three ready-warmed mailboxes |
| **The charge went through and the renewal did not** | Money taken, expiry date unchanged | The charge date on your invoice |
| **The domain has already lapsed** | Every mailbox on that one domain stopped at once | Whether the domain is still in service |

### 1. You are outside the renewal window

A domain bought through Reply can be renewed from **45 days before its expiry date until one day before it**. Both figures are fixed and the same for every account. Earlier than that, renewal has not opened; later, it has closed.

The 45-day opening is the registrar's own, not something Reply chose. Where Reply is tighter is at the other end: **once the expiry date passes there is no grace period through Reply**, even though the registrar itself would still accept a late renewal. So a domain that is technically still recoverable at the registrar can be past renewing here.

**How to recognize it:** the expiry date is either more than 45 days away or already within the final day, and no renewal is available either way.

**What to do:** renew early in the window rather than at the end of it. If the window has already closed, ask support what is still possible for that specific domain before you commit to it, and plan for a replacement in the meantime.

### 2. The expiry date you are reading is out of date

Reply re-fetches expiry dates from the provider rather than trusting the one recorded at purchase. When a fetch does not succeed, it fails quietly: no warning, and the previously recorded date stays on screen.

A domain can therefore look further from expiry than it really is. The renewal window you were waiting for may already have opened (or closed) while the screen still shows the old date.

**How to recognize it:** the date has not changed in a long time, or the domain stopped working before the date shown said it would.

**What to do:** do not plan a renewal around the last few days of the window. If the exact date matters, ask support to confirm it against the provider rather than reading it off the page.

### 3. A pre-warmed domain cannot be renewed

Pre-warmed packages are non-renewable by design. No renewal option appears on them, and a renewal request for one is refused. The package runs to the end of its term and then ends.

**How to recognize it:** the domain came as a package (one domain with three mailboxes already warmed and named) and there is nowhere to renew it.

**What to do:** arrange the replacement before the term runs out. Move sequences onto mailboxes you will still hold, and buy replacement capacity far enough ahead that it can be warmed if it is not itself pre-warmed.

### 4. You were charged and the renewal still failed

Payment is taken before the renewal is requested from the provider, so a charge can appear for a renewal that did not complete. The expiry date is what tells you which happened.

**How to recognize it:** there is a renewal charge on your billing history and the expiry date did not move.

**What to do:** do not retry the renewal, because a retry is charged in the same way. Open the [Reply Help Center](https://support.reply.io/) and send the team a message; they can review the charge on your account.

### 5. The domain lapsed and was taken out of service

Once a domain is past its expiry date, any of three things can take it down:

- a grace-period notice arriving from the registrar at the point of expiry
- a nightly sweep that picks up domains whose date has passed
- a final expiry notice from the registrar roughly seven days later

Whichever comes first, the result is the same: the domain and the mailboxes on it are taken out of service, and the sequences sending from those mailboxes stop.

**How to recognize it:** all the mailboxes on one domain stopped at the same time, and mailboxes on your other domains are unaffected.

**What to do:** move the affected steps onto mailboxes on a domain you still hold. Give any replacement domain time to warm up before it carries the volume the old one did.

## An unpaid charge removes the add-on and the mailboxes

This is a different path from expiry, and it moves faster than most people expect. **Twenty-four hours before the provider's next renewal date, a charge that has not been paid cancels the add-on and deletes the mailboxes**; in Reply and at the provider.

If an add-on went because a payment did not clear, contact support before buying a replacement; they can tell you what is still recoverable for that specific domain.

Keeping your payment details current on the plans and billing page is what prevents this one.

## Downgrading or cancelling your subscription

Moving to a free plan, or cancelling the subscription, deletes the local records of your purchased domains **immediately**: before the provider has confirmed anything, and with no prompt asking you to confirm. Nothing lists what you are about to lose first.

If you own purchased domains and you are changing plan, settle what happens to them before you make the change.

## Domain health is not re-checked forever

While a purchased domain is being set up, Reply re-checks its health weekly. Once the domain is fully set up, those weekly re-checks stop for good. If its DNS breaks later (a record edited, a provider migration, an entry that lapses) nothing detects that on your behalf.

If delivery from a domain gets worse, run its health check by hand instead of relying on a green result from months ago.

## FAQ

### When can I renew a domain?

From 45 days before its expiry date until one day before. Outside those dates renewal is not available, and there is no grace period once the date passes.

### Why is there no renew button on my domain?

Most often because it is a pre-warmed domain, and those cannot be renewed at all. The other reason is timing: the option does not appear until 45 days before expiry.

### I was charged but the domain did not renew. What happens to the money?

Payment is taken before the renewal is requested from the provider, so the charge does not reverse on its own. The Reply support team can review the charge on your account.

### What happens to my sequences when a domain expires?

Mailboxes on that domain stop sending and the sequences using them stall. Steps that run through mailboxes on other domains keep going. Reassign the stalled steps to mailboxes you still hold.

## Still stuck? Contact Reply support

If these steps didn't solve the problem, the Reply support team can look at your
account directly. Open the [Reply Help Center](https://support.reply.io/) and send
the team a message.

To get an answer faster, include:

- the domain, and whether you registered it through Reply or it came as a pre-warmed package
- the expiry date currently shown on screen
- the date of any renewal charge on your billing history
- what you tried, what appeared on screen, and your timezone

Don't send passwords, API keys, or access tokens.

## Related

- [Why are my purchased mailboxes still pending?](/troubleshooting/purchased-mailboxes-are-still-pending/) – an order that never completed
- [Why does my domain fail its DNS check?](/troubleshooting/domain-fails-dns-check/) – health checks stop once setup finishes
- [Why is a campaign not running?](/troubleshooting/campaign-is-not-running/) – sequences that stalled when mailboxes stopped

## Build with Reply

- REST API: [Email accounts](https://docs.reply.io/api-reference/introduction) – read the mailboxes attached to each domain
- MCP: [docs.reply.io/mcp](https://docs.reply.io/mcp/overview) – check which mailboxes stopped sending from an assistant