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Probe type · Starter+

Domain expiration probe

The forgotten-renewal tripwire. Watches your domain's expiry date weeks before it lapses, and alerts the second the registrar or name servers change.

Why you need it

A Domain probe watches the registration record itself — the calendar that decides whether example.com stays your domain at all. Auto-renew can silently fail, and on the day the registration lapses, DNS stops resolving — the website doesn't return 5xx, it disappears.

On every check the probe queries RDAP against the registry responsible for the TLD. When RDAP isn't available the probe falls back to traditional WHOIS on port 43 and parses the free-text response. From the response it captures:

  • Days until expiry — driving a two-tier state machine. Degraded days (default 15) flips Up → Degraded; Down days (default 0) flips Down.
  • Registrar name + name servers with drift detection — when either changes between consecutive checks an incident fires. Usually means account hijack or unintended transfer-out.
  • EPP status codes (clientHold, clientTransferProhibited, pendingDelete) — clientHold is the dangerous one, where the registry has stopped resolving the domain.
  • DNSSEC delegation + the exact expiresAt and createdAt timestamps.

Where it pays off

Add a Domain probe for every apex domain you own and care about:

  • Your production apex — the must-have case. 30 days of advance warning gives a full billing cycle to fix the renewal.
  • Brand and redirect domains — alternate TLDs and misspellings registered defensively. They rarely get attention, which is exactly why they silently lapse.
  • Customer / vanity domains — agencies and resellers operating domains on behalf of customers.
  • Hijack tripwire — even with trusted auto-renew, the registrar-change incident is the cheapest tripwire against an account takeover.

Not the right choice when: you want to monitor a certificate's expiry (use SSL — independent calendars). For DNS record values use DNS. Subdomains don't have their own registration record — add Domain for the apex.

Configuration parameters

Field Type Required Default Description
Name string Required — Human-readable label shown in the dashboard, on the status page, and in alert subject lines.
Target string (apex domain) Required — The apex domain to look up (e.g. example.com). Subdomains don't have their own registration record.
Degraded at (days) integer Optional 15 Days remaining at which the probe flips Up → Degraded. Raise for domains where renewal needs longer lead time.
Expired at (days) integer Optional 0 Days remaining at which the probe flips Down. 0 means only genuine expiry trips it.
Interval (seconds) integer Optional 86400 (1 day) Registration expiry moves in days, so daily cadence is plenty.
Timeout (seconds) integer (1-120) Optional 30 Hard ceiling on the RDAP + WHOIS-fallback lookup.
Show on status page boolean Optional false on create Master visibility gate for the public page.
Paused boolean Optional false Master kill-switch.
Auto-email alerts boolean Optional true Per-probe switch on top of per-watcher toggles.
SLA target decimal (99.0-99.999) Optional — Optional uptime SLO.

Available on Starter+. Already on StatusPulse? See the full config in Help →

Related

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