Which registrars sync expiry dates?

[domainjonny]

I found godaddy and name.com can sync domain expiry dates. Are there any others?

 

[Joe70]

Been wondering the same. Hard to believe it isn’t a widespread feature, but I guess the registrars would rather benefit from people who lose track.

 

[domainjonny]

Hard to believe no one on namepros is interested in domain expiry date sync, or knows which registrars offer this feature. After all, it is more cash for registrars...

 

[cooljub]

Hard to believe no one on namepros is interested in domain expiry date sync, or knows which registrars offer this feature.

Hi Jonny,
Perhaps not many members know? I'm interested too.. I've been watching the thread for replies

 

[Platinums]

sync expiry dates - what do you mean?

 

[Joe70]

sync expiry dates - what do you mean?

Right now, unless a person registered all of their domains on the same day, their domain expirations are staggered throughout the year, which can be a big hassle/risk. A very few registrars allow owners to change the expiration/renewal date, so the renewals can be on the same day. The only two registrars known to do this are GoDaddy and Name.com.

 

[Kate]

The registry service is called ConsoliDate. Perhaps if you search the term in Google along with registrar names you'll get more hits.
In theory all registrars could offer it since it is implemented as an extension to the EPP update command.
But I think that's the trick, many registrars must be using off the shelf or custom EPP software, that doesn't have the extension implemented. So that must be the reason why so few registrars offer the service, it is an extension to the EPP protocol and somebody has to to the coding. Only then they can sell the service. It is a development that isn't too difficult but there has to be enough demand for it - which I doubt, few people know the feature even exists.

I don't think it is so useful unless you have very few domains. Having different expiration dates means you can spread renewal fees all across the year.
In any case, people need to keep a list of domains with renewal dates, and never ever rely on the courtesy reminders that may land in spam or whatever. Ignore this advice, and you will lose domains one day - guaranteed

 

[Joe70]

It’s very useful to anyone with 100 or fewer domains, which is 99+ percent of domain owners. More registrars assuredly aren’t offering it due to greed.

 

[Hypersot]

The only service I know that does that is Namesilo. They renew on the first of each month any domains that expire in that month.

edit: note that they don't change the expiration dates... they just do the renewals on the same date if that's what you want.

 

[domainjonny]

Sporadic forum posts indicate dotster used to do this, but the now domain.com service does not have any info on their web site related to syncing domains.

Thanks to Kate we now know this is an extension to the EPP, so is there a list (public or not public someone could share) about which registrars actually implement this extension?

Google's supposed to be your friend, right? Couldn't find any other, hope someone else can enlarge our options for ConsoliDate-ing?

 

[cooljub]

It would be a helpful service if you have the same name in different extensions, for simpler management.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Nothing good in this idea if portfolio size is thousands domains...

 

[DomainBoxio]

name.com offers this also

 

[Kate]

Thanks to Kate we now know this is an extension to the EPP, so is there a list (public or not public someone could share) about which registrars actually implement this extension?

I guess there is no public list, it is up to the registrars to implement the service.
I searched on the Verisign website, but could not find much information about ConsoliDate. There is also a searchable listing of registrars on their site but you can't use ConsoliDate as a search criterion, again for the obvious reason that it depends on what kind of backend they are using and whether they have customized it.

In short, if the registrars don't actively advertise the feature on their website, I would assume they have not bothered to implement it. But don't hesitate to approach your favorite registrar(s) and ask. Perhaps someone will be willing to perform a one-shot update for you

I have myself set up an EPP box very recently, so I had to do some research into the software solutions available on the market. There are a few off the shelf systems (exemple: Cocca tools), either open-source or proprietary, or you can use classes/modules in languages like Python, Perl or PHP to build your own system.
Generally speaking, the tools only implement the standard EPP commands, like register, renew, delete, update, transfer. For many TLDs this is enough.
Some TLDs may require the use of EPP extensions, for example to accommodate extra fields in registrant profile like ID number, TM registration number, or VAT or stuff like that. Usually the registry will provide the XML schema. You 'just' have to populate the XML document and send it as EPP command.

So that is the ugly truth: each TLD may require customizations, not to mention the peculiarities and different life cycles of ccTLDs. On top of that some ccTLDs do not use EPP but a different protocol, or they may use EPP with occasional deviations from standard. Obviously the registrars (and the coders) would rather keep it as simple as possible.
That is a reason why big (American) registrars handle ccTLDs so poorly: they try to 'align' practices (let's-pretend-this-is-a-dot-com) across TLDs and don't always bother to follow the rules strictly.

name.com offers this also

Yes, we know this from post #1

 

[Joe70]

Just as an update, I transferred my domains to Name.com, which was a breeze, and then synced the expiration dates, which took about 30 seconds. Great service.