How to fix domain expiry on Shopify

Steps for Shopify

1. If your domain was purchased through Shopify: go to Shopify Admin → Settings → Domains. Click the domain, then click 'Manage' next to it. You will see the expiry date and a toggle for auto-renew — turn it ON.
2. If your domain was purchased elsewhere and only connected to Shopify: log in to your external registrar directly (e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap) and manage auto-renew there. Shopify only manages domains it sold.
3. To confirm which registrar owns the domain, go to Settings → Domains and look at the domain row — Shopify-managed domains show a 'Purchased' badge; third-party domains show 'Connected'.

What is domain expiry?

Every domain name has an expiry date — the date by which you must pay to keep ownership of it. Your registrar (the company where you bought or transferred your domain, e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains/Squarespace Domains, Cloudflare Registrar) stores this date in a public database called WHOIS. When a scanner cannot read the expiry date from the WHOIS record, it flags the domain as at risk because it cannot confirm the domain is safely renewed. This can happen because the registrar uses WHOIS privacy protection, because the registrar's WHOIS server is temporarily unavailable, or — most dangerously — because the domain was registered through a proxy or reseller that does not publish standard records. Regardless of the reason, the action is the same: check the expiry date directly in your registrar's dashboard and enable auto-renew.

If your domain expires, your entire store disappears from the internet — the website goes down, email stops working, and every link to your store breaks. Google treats a domain that goes dark as a strong negative signal, and recovering lost rankings after a domain lapse can take months. Worse, expired domains are routinely snapped up by domain squatters or competitors within days of expiry, meaning you could permanently lose the name your brand is built on. Enabling auto-renew costs nothing extra and eliminates this risk entirely — it is one of the highest-ROI actions any store owner can take.

See the complete Domain expiry guide for every platform and the full background.