When you sign up for a domain and/or hosting service on our website, you do so for a fixed period of time. When that initial period is up, you need to renew your subscription(s) in order to maintain service. This article describes how our renewal system works so that you will be able to decide well in advance whether or nor you wish to renew a domain or service (and advise us accordingly).
This is especially important for domain names because when a domain name is not renewed it may cease to operate thus preventing it being used for email or a website. After a period of time, if it is not renewed, it will expire and eventually be deleted becoming available for anyone to register. It is not uncommon for valuable domain names to be snapped up within seconds of becoming available, so there is a very significant chance that you will lose your name permanently if you do not renew it.
When you register a domain (or subscribe to a hosting service) our system will mark it as 'auto-renewing'. This means that 14 days before expiry our system will generate a renewal order (pro-forma invoice). If you have a valid default credit-card on your account, it will be charged usually 7 days before expiry and the domain or service will then be renewed for the same period as the original subscription. So that this does not happen without your knowledge, our billing system will remind you 30 days before expiration, and again at 15 days.
If you do not want the service to renew:
For a service, log on to your account, select Services -> My Services, and view the details for the service you wish to cancel. Click on the option to "Request Cancellation". You can cancel the service immediately, or set it to cancel automatically at the end of the paid-up term.
For a domain, log on to your account, select Domains -> My Domains and select Auto Renewal Status from the submenu. Simply set the Auto Renewal Status to OFF and the domain will expire naturally at the end of its paid term.
For domains, if you instead want to renew for a longer or shorter period of time, you can manually renew the subscription for the desired period.
You can cancel a service, or switch off auto-renewal for a domain any time before the service is renewed (usually 7 days before expiry, after successful payment).
If there is an open/unpaid pro-forma invoice for renewal, that will be cancelled also.
If a domain is not selected for auto-renewal, then our billing system will simply remind you periodically that it needs to be renewed and after it expires.
Please note that no service will be renewed unless payment has been received or there are agreed credit terms. This means that although a renewal order (pro-forma invoice) may be manually or automatically generated, the domain or service will not actually be renewed until your credit card has been successfully charged, or until payment has been received by other means such as FTP or chequeue.
In order to ensure uninterrupted service, we strongly recommend that all domains are set to renew automatically, and that valid Card payment details are maintained on your account at all times.
