What is Domain's Redemption?

The Redemption Period is a Registry-imposed hold period for domains that occurs after the registrar has instructed the Registry that the domain should be dropped.

Domains will have reached the Redemption Period state if they have been EXPIRED for at least 40 days and were NOT renewed by the owner or the registrar. Normally domains would be deleted at this point, but the Redemption Period provides the owner with one last chance to recover the domain before it’s dropped and potentially re-registered by a new owner.

The Redemption process is costly, both in fees and in effort. We strongly recommend that you renew your domains before expiry, or during the grace period when a renewal can be conducted in real time and for no additional cost.

Of course, there is always the option of waiting out the entire grace period, which would be approximately 40 (Post Expiry Grace period) + 30 (Redemption Period) + 5 (Pending Delete period) = 75 days. 

Domains with the .uk extension are suspended if they have been EXPIRED for at least 30 days and were NOT renewed by the owner or the registrar. The domain will then be deleted approximately 92 days after the expiry date. Note that .uk domains do not have a redemption period at all and will remain suspended until they are renewed or deleted – redemption fees do not apply.

During the grace period all associated services will cease working until the name is renewed (if and when this happens). Also, nameserver/DNS changes will not be possible.

Assuming that the domain DNS and hosts are still in place, the domain will begin working within 48 hours of renewal.

The Redemption Period is a costly process, as previously mentioned. There is a charge of £99 plus VAT for this service, on top of the domain renewal fee.

Domains can only be retrieved from redemption period by the original registrant, and not by someone else who just wants to newly register the domain.

*Legacy domains may have a different timescale before entering Redemption status.