Renew your .au domain name

To avoid losing your .au domain name, ensure you keep your contact details up-to-date so you don’t miss any reminder emails from your .au domain name provider.

Follow the steps provided to you by your .au domain name provider to renew your .au domain name.

To renew your domain name, you must ensure you continue to meet the eligibility and allocation requirements that apply to the domain name, as set out in the .au Licensing Rules. If you fail to meet the requirements at any time during the licence period, your licence can be cancelled.

There is a 30 calendar day grace period after your domain name licence expires in which you can renew it through your existing .au domain name provider or via a new provider.

You will not be able to use or update your .au domain name during the 30-day grace period after expiry, which means your website and email services will stop working during this time.

Certain domain name providers will charge a fee to restore a domain name during this grace period.

If you don’t renew your .au domain name within this grace period, your domain name will be removed from the registry at the end of the 30 days and become available to be registered by the public on a first-come, first-served basis.

To ensure you don’t lose your .au domain name to another eligible registrant or experience any website or email downtime, renew your domain name licence before it expires.

If the 30-day grace period after expiry has passed and you’d like to continue using the .au domain name, you’ll need to re-apply to register the .au domain name licence.

When the 30-day grace period ends, the domain name will be removed from the registry.

If the .au domain name has been removed from the registry and is available to be registered, you can re-register the domain name through your preferred .au domain name provider.

You may choose to engage the services of a specialist domain name provider known as a “drop catcher” to help you re-register your name. Drop catchers specialise in “catching” domain names as soon as they are removed from the registry.

If the domain name you previously held expired and has been registered by someone else, you can attempt to negotiate it to be transferred back to you, by contacting them using the registrant contact information in the WHOIS tool, or with the assistance of a domain broker.

Securing a domain name after it has expired is not guaranteed, so it is best to keep your registration information up-to-date, diarise your expiry date and do not let your domain name expire if you wish to continue using it.