Domain expiry — the daily expiry guardian
The expiry guardian reads each domain's real expiry date straight from the registry every day and counts down to it. As the date approaches it sends escalating reminder emails — 60, 30, 14, 7, and 1 day out, and again on the day it expires — so the renewal never slips past unnoticed. It's a best-effort reminder: you still own renewing your own domains.
Every day, Klaxel looks up the true expiry date for each domain you monitor. It reads that date from RDAP — the modern, structured successor to WHOIS — using IANA's bootstrap registry to find the right authority for each TLD. RDAP results are cached for 24 hours and each lookup is given a 15-second timeout, so the daily sweep stays fast and doesn't hammer registries.
A handful of country-code TLDs don't publish RDAP at all — .io, .co, .me and .so among them. For those, and only those, Klaxel falls back to a commercial WHOIS provider (Whoxy) — but only when a Whoxy API key with balance is configured. It's a best-effort fallback: if it isn't set up, those domains simply show as unsupported for expiry rather than showing a wrong date.
How the expiry countdown reaches you
- Klaxel reads the domain's registry expiry date each day and works out how many days remain.
- As the domain crosses each threshold — 60, 30, 14, 7, and 1 day out, and again on the expiry day itself — it sends one reminder email for that threshold.
- The email's urgency escalates with the countdown: “Heads up” at 60 days, “Renew soon” at 30, “Urgent” at 14, “CRITICAL” at 7, “FINAL WARNING” at 1, and “EXPIRED” once the date has passed.
- Each threshold fires exactly once — you won't get the same reminder twice — and if a daily run is missed, the next run still warns you at the most urgent threshold the domain has crossed since, so you're never left silent as expiry nears (an earlier, less-urgent step may be skipped if the domain moved past it before that next check).
Expiry alerts are best-effort reminders, not a renewal service. Klaxel does not renew domains for you and can't guarantee delivery — you remain responsible for renewing your own domains. Treat the countdown as a safety net on top of your own process, not a replacement for it.
Expiry reminders go out through the same routing engine as every other alert: a domain's own route wins, otherwise its client group's route, otherwise your account's default email. So expiry warnings land in the same place as that domain's other alerts.
Expiry reminder emails are sent for domains on an active subscription. If a subscription lapses, the daily countdown emails stop.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the expiry date come from?
From the domain's registry. Klaxel queries RDAP — the modern, structured successor to WHOIS — using IANA's bootstrap to find the right authority per TLD, caching results for 24 hours. It's the real registry expiry date, not a guess.
Are .io, .co and .me domains supported?
Yes, on a best-effort basis. Those ccTLDs don't publish RDAP, so Klaxel falls back to a commercial WHOIS provider (Whoxy) — but only when a Whoxy key with balance is configured. Without it, those domains show as unsupported for expiry rather than showing a wrong date.
When do the reminder emails go out?
At 60, 30, 14, 7, and 1 day before expiry, and again on the expiry day. Each threshold fires exactly once and the urgency escalates from “Heads up” to “FINAL WARNING” and finally “EXPIRED”. If a daily run is missed, the next one still alerts you at the most urgent threshold the domain has crossed since — so you're never left silent, though a less-urgent earlier step may be skipped if it was passed before that run.
Will Klaxel renew my domains for me?
No. The expiry guardian is a best-effort reminder only — it can't renew domains and can't guarantee delivery. You remain responsible for renewing your own domains; the countdown is a safety net on top of your own process.