Warned with room to act
WARNING fires 14 days out and FAIL at 7 by default, or earlier if you raise the thresholds. So renewal becomes a calendar task with runway, not a scramble after the name has already gone dark and stopped resolving.
Domain Expiry
The renewal nobody owns is the one that lapses. Hoppla starts the countdown before the registrar does.
Hoppla finds the registrable domain behind your site, asks RDAP or WHOIS for the expiry date and registrar the registry publishes, and counts down. By default it warns 14 days out and turns critical at 7; both thresholds are configurable. This watches the registration, not whether the site responds, so it never opens a downtime incident. Its job is giving you time to renew before the name lapses.
DOM / SAMPLE OUTPUTIllustrative example
domain acme.io · registrar Gandi · expires 2026-06-21 · 12d · WARNING
Fictional values. Not a live measurement.
01 / What it does
The expiry date read from the registry, not from memory
Hoppla finds the registrable domain behind your monitored hostname, queries RDAP or WHOIS for the expiry date, and works out the days remaining. It grabs the registrar in the same pass when the registry publishes it, so you know where the renewal lives. Some registries, such as DENIC for .de, publish no expiry date; Hoppla then says so instead of guessing. This is an advisory check. It warns the registration is lapsing, never that the site is down. An expiring domain nudges you two weeks early by default instead of pretending to be an outage.
What’s included
- ✓WHOIS and RDAP queries against the registry for the authoritative expiry date
- ✓Progressive subdomain stripping to the registrable domain (subdomain.example.com → example.com), after dropping a leading www.
- ✓daysUntilExpiry from the registry record (.de and some other registries publish no date)
- ✓Configurable thresholds (1–365 days): WARNING at 14 days, FAIL at 7 by default
- ✓Registrar captured whenever the registry publishes it
- ✓Advisory only: warns about the registration lapsing, never opens a downtime incident
- ✓Runs as a check on the same monitor as uptime, SSL, and DNS
02 / How it works
Under the hood.
01
Resolve the registrable domain
A check runs on subdomain.example.com, but the registration sits on example.com. Hoppla drops a leading www., then strips subdomains one level at a time until it lands on the registrable domain, so it queries the name that actually carries an expiry date.
02
Query WHOIS or RDAP
Hoppla asks the registry directly, over WHOIS or its structured successor RDAP, for the authoritative record. It reads the date the registry holds, not one guessed from DNS or half-remembered, and pulls the registrar out of the same response.
03
Compute daysUntilExpiry
From the registry date, Hoppla derives daysUntilExpiry and maps it to a state. By default: OK above 14 days, WARNING at 14 or fewer, FAIL at 7 or fewer. Both thresholds are yours to set, from 1 to 365 days. The registrar comes attached to the result when the registry lists it, so the renewal usually has an address by the time you go looking.
04
Warn early, then escalate
At 14 days (by default) the check turns WARNING and notifies you, while there's still slack. At 7 days it goes FAIL, the last-call state on the monitor. Both are advisory states about the registration. Neither opens a downtime incident for an outage that isn't happening.
03 / Why it matters0114 → 7d 02WHOIS/RDAP 03registrar
The part that actually moves the needle.
The registry's date, not a guess
Hoppla reads the expiry straight from WHOIS or RDAP at the registry. A domain set to auto-renew can still fail at the registrar, and reading the authoritative record is how you catch a renewal that never actually took.
You know where to renew
Results capture the registrar whenever the registry publishes it. When the warning lands, you usually already know which account to log into, with no hunting through old email to remember who the domain is even registered with.
04 / For every team
Whoever you are, this lands differently.
Solo SaaS founder
You set the domain to auto-renew three years ago and never thought about it again. Then the card on file expires, the renewal quietly fails, and the first sign is your whole app going dark because the name no longer resolves. No 500 to debug. Just gone. Hoppla reads the registry date, warns you 14 days out by default and marks the check critical at 7, with the registrar named where the registry lists it, so you know where to go fix it.
Small agency
A client's domain expires on a Saturday and nobody at the agency owns the renewal. It's in no one's job description, so it's in no one's calendar. Hoppla watches the registrable domain for every client site and flips to WARNING two weeks out by default (set it to 30 days if you want more runway), so there's time to get it onto someone's desk. You renew it Thursday afternoon instead of fielding a furious Monday call about a website that vanished over the weekend.
Large agency
Across hundreds of client domains, the expiry dates and registrars live in a spreadsheet that's already stale. Every new website monitor gets a domain check by default, with the registry expiry and, where published, the registrar captured, and the monthly report lists the days left on each domain. Account managers chase the renewals that matter this month, instead of finding out about a lapse once a client's site is already down.
Reseller / hosting provider
When a customer's domain lapses, it won't matter that registration was their job. The dead site sits on your infrastructure, under your brand. Hoppla runs the domain check across the customers you monitor, white-labeled under your name and domain, with WARNING at 14 days by default, or earlier if you set it. "Your domain expires in two weeks, want us to handle it?" beats explaining why their site disappeared on your watch.
Switching tools
Monitoring somewhere else? Bring your setup with you.
Import the monitors you already run in another tool. What comes across depends on the provider. Run both side by side for 24 hours or 7 days before you switch.
- ✓ Guided import
- ✓ Shadow run before you switch
- ✓ Coverage varies by provider
Import from
- Oh Dear
- Uptime Robot
- Better Stack
- Pingdom
- StatusCakeBeta
- CronitorBeta
- Healthchecks.ioBeta
- Statuspage
The importer opens in your workspace once you have access.
Get early accessFOR HOSTERS & RESELLERS
See the reseller program Domain expiry tracked across the customers you monitor, with warnings under your brand.
05 / FAQ
Straight answers.
Why not use a dedicated domain-expiry monitor?
Because then domain expiry is one more standalone tool, login, and bill, watching a date in isolation from everything else about the site. In Hoppla the domain check runs on the same monitor as uptime, SSL, and DNS, with one alert stream. The registration gets watched by default from the moment you add a website monitor, right next to the cert that expires and the DNS that has to resolve to it.
My domain is set to auto-renew. Do I still need this?
Yes, auto-renewal is exactly where it fails quietly. An expired card on file, a registrar billing issue, or a transfer mid-flight can leave the renewal undone while you assume it's handled. Hoppla reads the actual expiry date from WHOIS or RDAP every run, so an auto-renew that didn't take shows up as a WARNING two weeks before the name goes dark, by default.
Will this wake me up if my domain is expiring?
Not as an outage. The domain check is advisory: it warns the registration is lapsing, it doesn't open a downtime incident. The WARNING at 14 days (by default) lands as the heads-up it is and the check turns FAIL at 7, so you renew on your schedule instead of getting paged for something that isn't an active outage.
It runs on a subdomain. Does it check the right domain?
Yes. Registrations live on the registrable domain, not the subdomain, so Hoppla strips subdomains one level at a time down to example.com (after dropping a leading www.) and queries that. You point the monitor at the host you care about; the domain check works out the right name to ask the registry about.
Your next step
Catch the renewal before the registrar pulls the plug.
Checks, alerts and status pages in one workspace. Now in early access: join the list for an invite.