dotvitals

The domain is in the redemption period

CriticalConfirmeddomain.rdap.redemption-period

What this check looks for

The domain expired, was deleted, and is in the roughly 30-day window in which the previous owner can still get it back — by asking the registrar for a restore and paying a redemption fee. It has already stopped resolving.

Why it matters

This is the last stage at which the domain is recoverable by you. When the window closes it moves to pending delete and then to the open market, and at that point the name — and everything that depends on it — belongs to whoever registers it next.

When the check passes, your report says: “The registration is live, with no deletion process under way”.

What it costs your score

When this check fails it removes 80 points from your Domain registration score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. Domain registration carries a weight of 5 in the overall score.

It shares the domain.expiry family ceiling of 90 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from Domain registration. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.

Severity
critical
Default confidence
confirmed
Status when triggered
fail
Deduction
80 points
Family cap
domain.expiry · 90
Category
Domain registration
Module
Domain rdap
Fix owned by
registrar
In the ruleset since
2026.09

How the whole score is calculated

How to fix it

Open a support ticket with the registrar today and ask for a redemption restore.

The window is roughly 30 days and it is the last one in which the domain is yours to recover.

  1. Contact the registrar's support directly — this cannot be done from the control panel. Ask for a 'redemption restore' or 'RGP restore' by name.

  2. Expect a fee well above a normal renewal, and expect to renew for a further term on top of it.

  3. Confirm afterwards that the status has cleared: a restore that stalls at pendingRestore falls back into redemption if the registrar does not file the closing report.

  4. Once it is back, fix what caused it — auto-renew off, a lapsed card, or renewal notices going to an address nobody reads.

How to confirm it worked

  • Re-run this scan and confirm the redemptionPeriod status is gone and the expiry date is in the future.

A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.

Technical detail

The registry reports the status redemptionPeriod (RFC 3915). The domain has been removed from the zone, so DNS for it is already failing.

Restoring is a manual, chargeable registry operation: your registrar files a restore request, the domain moves to pendingRestore, and the registrar then files a report that completes it. Registrar fees for this are typically an order of magnitude above a renewal. It is not something you can do yourself from the control panel, and not every registrar advertises that it is possible at all — ask explicitly.

The window is about 30 days from deletion and is set by registry policy, not by your registrar.

Standards and references

Test this on your domain

Run the check that produces this finding, on its own, against any domain.

Open the domain rdap checker

Other domain rdap checks