ICANN & Domain Ownership Requirements & Policies
There are responsibilities and requirements to Maintain Ownership of your domain and to keep it operational within new ICANN Guidelines. Failure to comply with all of these requirements can result in penalty fees, suspendion or loss of your domain.
BILLING: Domains and Services purchased through Lowesthosting will require renewal based on the initial Term purchased. You can change your Domain renewal Term from 1 to 3 years by opening a support ticket. Our billing system will auto invoice active domain or service renewals but its your responsibility to log into our Account Portal and pay the invoice manually or you can set your account to auto pay open invoices provided your domain(s) / Service(s) are set to Credit Card as their default payment method and you maintain an active card on file OR their default payment method is set to Paypal and you setup a corresponding Paypal Subscription to pay them on or slightly after the invoice due date.
You can renew ANY service earlier than its due date (before its invoiced) or change your default billing method or Term by opening a support ticket. You can renew any DOMAIN we provide manually at any time or up to 30 days after expiry via your Account Portal.
Failure to pay your domain will suspend it on the day it expires which may cause any services mapped to your domain (email , hosting etc) to stop working. Once expired, you have a maximum of 30 days (known as the Grace Period) in which your domain can be renewed at normal pricing. If you fail to renew your domain within that Grace Period the Domain will go into Redemption Status for the next 30-60 days and can only be recaptured and renewed after paying a Redemption Fee of $139 which includes 1 year renewal from original expiry. Beyond Redemption you will have lost your domain but may be able to repurchase it as new if it is not captured by another party first. It is your responsibility to maintain accurate billing information however since Lowesthosting can not insure you get or read your emails, it is always your responsibility to insure your domains are paid in full. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION AS TO WHEN YOUR DOMAIN EXPIRES , SIMPLY LOG INTO YOUR ACCOUNT PORTAL AND GO TO MY DOMAINS SECTION.
NAME SERVERS: Each Domain is set to a minimum of 2 Name Servers ( A primary and secondary) which map the Domain to the Name servers for the Hosting or DNS provider that you use. All domains provided by Lowesthosting are set to our default Central Name servers NS1.Lowesthosting.com / NS2.Lowesthosting.com however if you use a different Hosting or DNS provider you will need to update your Domain via the Domain manager within your Account Portal. Remember to unlock your domain and save the unlocked state before making changes.
DOMAIN WHOIS ACCURACY COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS: It is CRUCIAL that you maintain accurate and working WHOIS information for each of your Domains and you manage this via the Domain Manager within your Account Portal. ICANN — the organization that manages the Domain Name System requires domain owners to maintain accurate public WHOIS information per their Whois Accuracy Policy. As of 2016 ICANN is now strongly enforcing accurate WHOIS information through new Domain Validation procedures and failure to comply can result in your domain being suspended at the registry level so MAKE SURE YOUR DOMAINS ARE ALL UP TO DATE WITH WORKING INFORMATION.
DOMAIN VALIDATION / VERIFICATION: ICANN — the organization that manages the Domain Name System has implemented new rules as of 2014 that require all domain registrars and their agencies mandate domain owners verify domain registrant information for any of the following conditions:
- A new domain is registered with unverified contact information.
- A domain is transferred to a new owner.
- A domain registrant updates their email address or phone number with unverified information.
- We are notified or have reason to believe that a domains contact info is invalid.
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A domain's 30-day or 5-day renewal notice (also called "WDRP") bounces.
If you received an email asking you to validate your domain its important that you follow the procedures to approve the validation or your domain will be disabled by the registry. Domain validation emails are sent to the Domain Administrative Email Address so its very important to keep your domain information up to date.
If your domain is paid up and your website server online but your domain doesn't even resolve, then your domain may have failed validation. This can be due to your missing / ignoring emails sent to you or due to having an old email address listed for the domain that needs updating. You can do a whois check whois information here. If your Domain requires Validation or is on HOLD STATUS and your services are no longer working please refer to the Domain Validation Here.
COPYRIGHT COMPLIANCE: It is important that the domain you purchased does not conflict with any existing Copyright or the website you host does not contain material that you don't have rights to publish. Complains to the Registrar by parties complaining about Copyright or Digital Millennium Copyright Act DMCA infringement that are not promptly replied to or addressed by the domain Registrant or Administrator may cause the registrar to suspend your domain.