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Your website or email has stopped working and the domain has expired? Pay the open renewal invoice in the Hosting Panel under Products & Services → Domains → your domain → Billing. That lifts the registry hold. Allow 2 to 6 hours for the site to come back, and up to 48 hours for email.If there is no open invoice, open a ticket — we can generate one.

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How renewal works

Getting an invoice in advance is normal and does not mean something is wrong. If auto-renewal is on and you have a valid saved payment method, no action is needed.
Automatic payment fails silently in three common cases, and the first you hear of it is usually a past-due notice:
  • Auto-renewal is switched off on that domain
  • The saved card has expired, or was renewed with your bank but not updated in the panel
  • There is no saved payment method on the account at all
If you get a past-due notice when you expected auto-renewal, check all three.

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Checking or changing auto-renewal

  1. Log in to the Hosting Panel at https://my.hosting.com.
  2. In the left sidebar, under Products & Services, click Domains.
  3. Click the domain.
  4. In the left sidebar, click Billing.
  5. Scroll to Renewal & Subscription Settings and use the Auto-renew slider.
A blue toggle means auto-renewal is on.

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Renewing manually, or early

Same path — Domains → your domain → Billing — then pay the open invoice. To renew early, go to the domain → Billing → Issue next invoice. That generates the renewal invoice ahead of time so you can pay it and remove any risk of lapsing. Multi-year terms are available from the domain’s management page if you want to renew for several years at once.
Domain Expiry Protection is available as an add-on for domains you cannot afford to lose. Domains have a hard expiry date, unlike hosting, so a failed renewal payment takes the domain offline immediately and can lead to redemption fees.
.au domains can only be renewed within 90 days of expiry. Outside that window the registry returns serverRenewProhibited and the renewal will not go through. This is a registry rule, not something we can override.

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Stopping a domain from renewing

A domain registration cannot be cancelled mid-term for a refund. Once registered, the term is paid to the registry and runs to its end date. What you can do is stop it renewing. To let a domain lapse naturally, turn the Auto-renew slider off. The domain runs to the end of its current term and then expires. To also void an open renewal invoice, submit a cancellation request: Products & Services → Domains → your domain → Renewal & Subscription Settings → Cancellation request. This voids pending renewal invoices for that domain automatically.
Turning off auto-renewal does not void an invoice that has already been generated. If you have an open renewal invoice you do not intend to pay, submit the cancellation request as well, or it will keep showing as due.
Cancellation requests must be submitted by the account owner through the panel, one per domain. Support cannot submit them on your behalf.

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What happens after a domain expires

Expiry is not one event. A domain moves through several registry stages, and what it costs to recover rises at each one.
Email stops the moment the domain enters the grace period, because the domain no longer resolves. Incoming mail is not held for you — senders get a failure. If the domain lapses all the way into public availability, incoming email stops permanently.This happens even when your hosting plan is active and paid. Domain registration and hosting are separate services.

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Recovering at each stage

  • In the grace period — pay the open renewal invoice in the panel. Normal price, no penalty.
  • In the redemption period — the panel usually cannot generate this invoice itself. Open a ticket and we will raise a custom invoice covering the renewal plus the registry’s redemption fee.
  • In pendingDelete — nothing can be done. Wait for it to be released and register it again if you still want it.
  • After public release — register it as a new purchase at the standard rate, if nobody else has taken it.
A domain showing as “Closed” in your account has lapsed past the point where the panel can renew it. Raise a ticket rather than trying to renew it yourself.

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After you pay

  • The website typically comes back within 2 to 6 hours
  • Email can take up to 48 hours to resolve globally
  • If the domain was in redemption, activation can stay pending until we perform a manual registry synchronisation. If it is still down after the windows above, raise a ticket and we will push the sync through
  • If you have paid but the service still shows as suspended, send us the payment reference and we will reconcile it

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My website is down — is it the domain or the hosting?

These are separate services and either can lapse while the other is fine.
If a domain does not appear in your account at all, it may be registered under a different profile or email address. Check any other accounts you hold with us before assuming it has been lost, and raise a ticket if you cannot find it.