Domain expiry monitoring with RDAP and DNS checks
Lampwick looks up your domain's expiry date through RDAP once a day, alerts 30, 14, 7 and 1 days before it lapses, and watches NS and MX records hourly.
Lampwick looks up the expiry date of your domain once a day through RDAP and alerts your team 30, 14, 7 and 1 days before the registration expires. The same check watches the domain's DNS: when the NS or MX records change, you get DNS records changed with what was added and removed. Both come with every uptime monitor, on by default, on every plan.
Why domains lapse
A domain expires when the card on file at the registrar expires, the renewal e-mails go to someone who left, or auto-renew was never on. The site, the e-mail and every API on that domain stop at once, and a lapsed domain can be bought by someone else. DNS changes break things just as quietly: a nameserver moved during a migration, an MX record deleted by hand.
What you get
Domain expiry
| Lookup | Once a day, through RDAP at the registry's own server (from the IANA bootstrap file). |
| Which domain | The registrable domain of the URL: example.com for shop.example.com, github.io for x.github.io. Monitors on one domain share one lookup. |
| Alerts | 30, 14, 7 and 1 days before expiry, once per threshold. |
| In the app | The Domain tile on the monitor's page, and a Domain 21d badge in the monitor list within 30 days. |
RDAP is the successor of WHOIS: the same registration data as structured JSON over HTTPS, served by the registry.
DNS changes
| Lookup | Hourly, through public resolvers (Cloudflare and Google), never your server's own. |
| Records | NS and MX of the host and its domain. Optional: A, AAAA and CNAME too. |
| Confirmation | A difference is looked up again after 5 minutes. Only when the second lookup agrees does it alert. |
| In the app | The DNS tile and Recent changes on the monitor's page. |
A, AAAA and CNAME are off by default because CDNs and load balancers rotate them; turn them on for a host with fixed addresses.
Set it up
- Create an account and open Uptime.
- Add a monitor for a URL on the domain, such as
https://example.com. Domain expiry and DNS changes are already ticked. - Within a minute, the Domain and DNS tiles show the expiry date and the records.
Every setting and error message is in the SSL, domain and DNS docs.
What it doesn't do
- Some registries publish no expiry date or have no RDAP server, including
.nl. The tile then says Unknown and no expiry alert is sent; turn on auto-renew at your registrar. Lampwick tries again weekly. - It doesn't watch domains without a monitor, and doesn't check registrar locks, WHOIS contact changes or DNSSEC.
- DNS change alerts cover the record types above, not TXT records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
- A URL with an IP address has no domain to check; the tile says None.
What it costs
Included with every uptime monitor: 3 on Free, 20 on Pro (€29), 100 on Team (€79), 300 on Business (€199), per team per month. See pricing.
Related
- The certificate on the same host: SSL certificate expiry monitoring.
- What a lapsed domain and a DNS change look like from outside: how to know when your app is down.
- Many client domains in one account: Lampwick for agencies.
Start free and add your domain.