Security·29^th October 2026·The Grizzlyware team

Do you own your domain name?

Part 5 of 5 in our October series: small, free steps to take control of your own cyber security.

Your domain name is the online equivalent of your address. It’s the ‘yourbusiness.co.uk’ part of your website and email address that allows your customers to find and contact you online. It’s one of your smallest business costs, and one of the easiest to forget about.

Depending on your plan, it’ll renew either once a year or every few years – and in between, you’re unlikely to think about it at all. But if it lapses or ends up in the wrong hands, your website and email will both stop working at the same time.

It’s not just small businesses

Even large companies have been caught out by expired domains. In July 2017, marketing software company Marketo forgot to renew its main domain, which took its website down and stopped its customers logging in to its platform and using its tools.

In Marketo’s case, it was a lucky escape – the domain was in grace period, giving them time to renew it before someone else could re-register it. If no one had noticed in time, it could have been very difficult to get back.

Marketo’s CEO had to apologise publicly, and the outage has since been widely used as an example of how something as small as a renewal can become a costly mistake. And if a team the size of Marketo’s can miss it, it’s not surprising that small businesses do too.

How small businesses lose track

In our experience, it’s rarely carelessness that causes a domain to expire. More often than not, business owners aren’t even aware it’s something they’re responsible for. In a lot of cases, the domain was set up years ago by someone who’s no longer around:

A web designer or agency you no longer work with
A relative or friend who built the website
A former employee

Sometimes, the domain is even registered in their own name, on their own account, so renewal reminders never reach you. Or they set up auto-renewal, but paid with a personal card that has since expired. Usually, the first time you realise this is when your site goes down and you’re left trying to find contact details for the person who set it up.

What’s at stake

When a domain expires, the website and email linked to it usually stop working immediately. Customers visiting your site will see an error, and emails sent to you will bounce back. There’s often a grace period after expiry when the domain can be recovered – sometimes for an additional fee – but not always.

If the domain isn’t renewed in time, it’s released and anybody can register it. Not only does this mean a bad experience for customers trying to reach you, but the domain could also be used against you – by competitors, who may redirect it to their own site; by people who try to sell it back to you at a highly inflated price; or, more sinisterly, by people posing as your business to obtain customer details.

There’s also the question of ownership. Whoever the domain is registered to is, in effect, its owner. If that’s your old web designer or a disgruntled former employee, getting it back depends on being able to contact them, and on their goodwill.

What you can do

Even if you have a web developer, it’s important to know the following, to keep your business safe and you in control. Finding this out costs nothing, but knowing it could be worth a lot.

Who is the domain registered to? It should be your business – not a supplier or an individual.
Who can log in to the account? Make sure the relevant people in your business have access – not just one person.
Whose card is on the account? Check it’s a business card, and that it doesn’t expire before your next renewal.
When does it expire, and is auto-renew turned on? Make sure auto-renew is turned on, then set a reminder in your calendar to check the card is still valid a month before the renewal date.
Where do renewal reminders go? Ideally a shared address (or several addresses) that’s checked often and, if possible, one that doesn’t use the domain itself – as that will stop working if the domain lapses.

If you aren’t sure where to start, ask whoever looks after your website and email, or your hosting company.

If you discover that somebody else holds the domain, don’t panic – simply ask them to transfer it to your business. As long as you have a good relationship with them, it should usually be a straightforward task.

That’s a wrap

This article is the final instalment in our five-part October series on quick, free ways you can improve cyber security for your small business. Over five weeks, we’ve looked at nine free security basics, clearing out unused plugins, spotting a fake ‘trusted contact’, keeping your website up to date, and now, making sure you own your domain name. You can find all five articles in the series in our Security section.

Need a hand?

If you’d like us to check where your domain stands, or anything else from this series, call us on 01637 222001 or get in touch, and we’ll tell you honestly what, if anything, needs doing.