Domain name & hosting: renewal, expiry, disposal

[Bwana]

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[SimonMac]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in Technical, Business, Legal or even General (yikes!)......

I have a dot com domain name + hosting that I bought through the same company several years ago. I originally paid to have the domain name for 10 years, and since then I've been paying the annual fee to renew the hosting. The hosting has now come around to renewal time, but there are still a few years left on the domain name.

However, I haven't really done much with the website in the last year or two, and so it doesn't seem worth renewing the hosting any more. Nor does it seem worth renewing the domain name when that expires. I want to have no further cost and no further responsibility and no further association with the domain name. Effectively, I want rid of it!

Should I just stop renewing the hosting (which will run out soon) and then let the domain name also expire in a few years time?

Is there any legal or other problem with having a domain name that has no hosting?

My main concern is to minimize (or better still, completely avoid) any further cost.

A secondary concern is anonymity. What I mean is, once the domain name has expired, I would hope that it does not show up in the results if someone types my name into a search engine. I'm not sure whether it even shows up like that now, because the site has had very little content and very few hits over the last few years, so it may have dropped out of the search results somehow?

Thanks.

I have may domains, most are unused (.com/.co.uk/.net/.org versions of my main ones) no problem having them registered but inactive, although if you have any email addresses associated with them of course that would usually stop when the hosting stops, although in the past I have used Google Apps for email etc.

[TheFaQQer]

If you don't want the hosting and let it lapse, then normally the domain name falls back onto a generic hosting page eventually. Depending on the domain name (and host), you could point it to an advertising page which might give you a few pennies every month if people land there and use the search or click on the link.

Some of my old website names do that now anyway, but that's because the host did it and they keep the money. I suspect that it renders them nothing each month, to be honest.

[Bwana]

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[NickFitz]

My domain name is in the format: <word1><word2><word3>.com

Is it worth trying to sell the domain name? What are the pros & cons of selling?

Who owns the domain name after it has expired?



Thanks.

A domain name is always ultimately owned by the registrar for the top-level domain (.com in this case) but once you let your registration lapse, the company through whom you originally registered will probably have a subsidiary that snaps it up as it expires. There's usually a grace period for you to renew your registration, in case you just missed the expiry date, after which they, or some company they sell it on to, will point it to one of those generic search pages (probably featuring that blonde female student with a rucksack) until such time as they find somebody else who wants it.

It's probably worth trying to flog it yourself, if you don't want to put up a generic ad page yourself - you may not make much, but if there's a few bob in it, it's better in your hands than theirs

There are a few tips at 8 Tips on How to Sell Your Domain Name | Flippa Blog, who also have an appraisal tool that might give you a rough idea of what it could fetch, and a Google for sell domain name will give you plenty of options.

[Bwana]

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