Domain Life Cycle: From registration to drop.

Domain Life-Cycle

life_line

This is a life-cycle of a typical domain name, from registration to deletion. For simplicity, we assume that the domain name was registered on Jan 1, 2008.

Date	Event	Status
Jan 1, 2008	Domain registered.	ACTIVE/LOCKED
Mar 1, 2008	After 60 days, the domain can now be transferred to another registrar, if desired.	ACTIVE/LOCKED
Nov 1, 2008	We will start sending renewal notices around this time.	ACTIVE/LOCKED
Jan 1, 2009	The domain has expired; Your domain will go ON-HOLD, which means your website and email will no longer work; you can still renew your domain name for the regular price; you can no longer transfer the domain unless you renew first.	REGISTRAR-HOLD
Feb 9, 2009	After 19 days, the domain will be dropped, to get the domain back after this point you have to pay the redemption fee.	REDEMPTIONPERIOD
Mar 9, 2009	After 30 days, the domain can no longer be restored, the only way to get the domain back is to wait until it is dropped from the registry Of course anyone else can also register the domain at that time.	PENDINGDELETE
Mar 16, 2009	After 5 days, the domain is dropped from the central registry and can now be registered by anyone on first come first serve bases. If the domain is valuable or has lots of traffic it will be snapped up seconds after it has dropped.	-

If you want to keep your domain name, the best policy is to renew early. You do not lose any time by renewing early. For example, if the domain expires on Jan 1 2009, and you renew 1 month before that, the new expiration date is Jan 1 2010.

The chart above applies to COM & NET domains. Other domains have a similar lifecycle but the status names may be different. WS domains do not have a REDEMPTIONPERIOD, and are dropped 25 days after expiration.