What it checks
Once a day, queries the domain registry for a domain and records the registrar, the registration expiry date, the days remaining and the nameservers on file.
The check fails when days remaining is below your warning threshold, or when the registry returns no usable expiry date.
Fields
| Field | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | bare registrable domain | — |
| Warn below | 1 – 365 days | 30 days |
| Interval | 20 s – 24 h | 24 h |
| Failures before down | 1 – 10 | 2 |
| Re-alert every | 5 min – 24 h, or off | off |
Use the registrable domain — example.com, not www.example.com. Registration exists at
the registrable level; a subdomain has no registry record of its own.
It does not require the domain to resolve
This is a registry lookup, not a DNS lookup, so a domain with no A record is monitorable.
That matters more than it first appears. A domain used mainly for email often publishes only MX and TXT records at the apex and nothing else — and a monitoring tool that resolves the domain before checking it would refuse to watch exactly the domains most likely to lapse unnoticed.
Choosing a threshold
| Situation | Suggested |
|---|---|
| Auto-renew on, card known good | 30 days |
| Auto-renew on, card owned by someone who left | 60 days |
| Manual renewal, or a registrar you rarely sign into | 90 days |
For anything that matters, err high. The renewal itself takes two minutes; finding out who controls the registrar account can take a week.
Failure messages
🔴 DOWN — example-com-registration (example.com): domain registration expires in 21 days
🔴 DOWN — example-com-registration (example.com): registry returned no expiry date
🔴 DOWN — example-com-registration (example.com): could not parse registry expiry dateOn the monitor:
BigRock Solutions Ltd. · expires 2027-05-29T18:41:10 · 297 days remainingRegistry coverage
Most gTLDs — .com, .net, .org, .io, .dev, .app — publish a machine-readable expiry
date and work well.
Some ccTLDs publish little or nothing; the registry may withhold the expiry date entirely. When
that happens the monitor reports registry returned no expiry date rather than guessing.
If your TLD is not supported, this monitor cannot help, and a calendar reminder is the honest alternative.
Nameservers
The nameservers on file at the registry are recorded alongside the expiry. A registrar-level hijack — where nameservers change without your involvement — shows up here, which is a different signal from a DNS monitor watching records inside the zone.
Worked example
Domain: example.com
Warn below: 60 days
Interval: 24 hours
Failures before down: 1
Re-alert every: 24 hours