What is the ICANN ERRP — the policy that governs what happens when a domain expires

The Expired Registration Recovery Policy is the rulebook ICANN requires registrars of generic top-level domains to follow when a registration lapses and the owner does nothing. It is not a law and it does not apply to country code domains, which have their own rules. It is a policy, and breaking it costs a registrar its accreditation.

It exists because "the domain expired and now it belongs to someone else" is a bad outcome for everyone except the domain speculator, and because the intermediate steps — notices, grace periods, restoration — are exactly the part a customer experiences as "my site vanished".

The sequence

The policy names the steps, and the windows are ranges rather than dates, because a scheduled job lands early or late and a point would make ordinary jitter look like non-compliance.

The same six steps as a timeline:

text
  notice, first
    26–35 days before expiry
        │
  notice, second
    4–10 days before expiry
        │
        ▼
  EXPIRY — the registration lapses
        │ ◀── the name stops resolving here
        ▼
  notice, third
    within 5 days after expiry
        │
        ▼
  REDEMPTION GRACE — 30 days
        │    the name can still be restored
        ▼
  DELETION — the name is deleted and can be re-registered

The one thing the table does not show is on the diagram: the name stops resolving at expiry, not at deletion. The thirty days of the redemption period are a window for getting the registration back, not a window in which the site keeps answering.

Three properties of that table are worth stating plainly, because they are the ones customers ask about.

The notices have to be delivered without affirmative action. They go by email, in the language of the registration agreement, and they arrive whether or not the customer logs in to anything. An in-app banner is not a notice, because a banner is something you have to come and look at.

The notices have to say what happens if you do nothing. Not just that a date is coming. Our own rule is the same: the amount, the date, and the consequence.

DNS is interrupted from expiry until deletion. This is the part that sounds harsh and is not a choice. A lapsed name cannot keep resolving, because resolving it would mean serving a site for someone who no longer holds the registration. So the honest promise is narrower than it sounds: the site stays up for what we renewed, and if the registration itself has lapsed, the name stops resolving however generous the grace window was.

The three fees, and when they have to be published

The policy is also a disclosure rule, and it is the part registrars get wrong. Three fees, not one:

1. The renewal fee.
2. The post-expiration renewal fee, where it differs from the first.
3. The redemption or restore fee.

All three have to be reasonably available on the registrar's website at the time of registration, clearly displayed, and linked from the registration agreement. A fee that exists only in a policy document is not a fee a customer can act on.

The restore fee has one more property: it is quoted before it is charged. The registry sets it per name, so publishing a fixed number would be a number that is wrong for the next TLD. The published figure is an illustration; the live quote is the price.

What it does not do

• It does not extend a registration. The windows above are the last chances,

not a rolling guarantee.

• It does not apply to country code domains, where the registry's own policy

governs.

• It does not promise that a name can be restored after the deletion — that

is a separate permission, and a separate fee.