hostnag

Domain monitoring

Every domain's registration watched for lapsing, plus who holds the nameservers and whether DNSSEC is still switched on.

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Included on every plan.

PlansFreeProBusiness
What Domain monitoring catches
What breakshostnag
A domain lapsesYes
Your nameservers or registrar changeYes

How it works

  1. 01

    Add the domain

    A registrable domain, like example.com. hostnag looks it up in RDAP, the public successor to WHOIS.

  2. 02

    Set the thresholds

    The same 30, 14, 7, 3 and 1 day defaults as certificates, editable per group; the final window repeats daily.

  3. 03

    hostnag reads more than the expiry date

    Registrar, nameservers and DNSSEC status are read on every poll, 1440 minutes apart on Free, 60 on Pro, 15 on Business, so a domain that is not close to lapsing is still watched.

  4. 04

    A change is its own alert

    A new registrar, new nameservers, or DNSSEC turned off each raise a Changed event the moment RDAP shows it, separate from the expiry countdown.

What you'll be told

What you get told

  1. [Info] example.com domain expires in 25 days

    The domain for example.com expires in 25 days (07 Oct 2026). Renew it before then.

    Domain

  2. [Warning] Nameservers changed for api.example.com

    api.example.com is now delegated to ns1.evil.example, ns2.evil.example (was dns1.registrar-servers.com, dns2.registrar-servers.com). If you did not move DNS, treat this as a possible hijack.

    Domain

Sample alerts, rendered by the same code that writes your email and Slack messages.

Settings

Target
a registrable domain
Interval
1440 min on Free, 60 on Pro, 15 on Business
Thresholds
30, 14, 7, 3, 1 days by default, set per group
Tracked on every poll
registrar, nameservers, DNSSEC status

Questions

Does hostnag renew domains for me?

No. hostnag only watches and nags; it never touches your registrar account.

What if my registrar doesn't offer an API?

RDAP is public for every registrar, so there is nothing to connect or configure.

Related

DNS monitoringThe records that point people and mail at your systems, watched for drift from the answer you told hostnag to expect.Certificate monitoringEvery certificate hostnag can reach is watched for expiry and a swapped chain; the ones it cannot reach get a URL to report to instead.

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