How long do support tickets usually take to get answered? Upon visiting my website this morning, it had seemingly poofed. I was told by support I was sent emails for domain renewal but there was a massive problem with Shopify emails to “renew my domain” not coming through and I never saw any alerts that needed attention for it when visiting my admin page. I had the auto renewal onsince I opened the store last year, so I never thought to check domain settings at all. A month after expiration (today) the domain disappeared and I contacted Shopify support for help because all that was listed on the domain was “Action Required” but when I would click it, there was nothing there which I later found out was because it was expired. The lovely support chatter let me know that the system deleted the domain from my Shopify. The support chat then got “escalated” as they call it to a support ticket number given to me. I was told it was to put me in touch with the team who is to help renew my domain but haven’t heard anything back. All the support chat window says about it is “Estimated Reply Time: As Soon As Possible.” What does that imply? This is greatly affecting business and I need it resolved as soon as possible.
**Support #**33868257
I also find it very odd that we don’t immediately have the option to fix something like this in our domain settings. Had I known the automatic renewal was somehow turned off I would have paid it immediately. I checked the domain at a domain provider site and it’s still unavailable, so it is not an option to simply buy it back. I also changed my password because there was an odd log in from another state. I don’t know if it’s related or not but I wanted to add the info that it’s possible someone else gained access to my account and turned off my auto-renewal. The reasons for them possibly doing so are unbeknownst to me.
When a domain expires, it might stop functioning immediately but it may also be able to be renewed on our end. The reason that you can’t simply re-purchase the domain via a domain provider is because when a domain fails to be renewed, it will enter a grace period for 40 days, giving our team the chance to renew the domain on your behalf. After 40 days, the domain will enter a redemption period, where we may also still be able to manually renew it for you. It’s only after the end of the redemption period that a domain gets deleted from the registry, making it available for anyone to purchase it via a domain provider. You can find more information about this on our help guide here.
I definitely understand your frustration here and can see how important it is to renew your domain quickly. Due to security reasons though, we can’t access support tickets via the Community Forums, but if your ticket was escalated to our technical team rest assured that our team intends to reply with any updates to support tickets as quickly as possible. Our turnaround time may be a bit longer than expected at times, but this is only to ensure that the proper steps are being taken so that we can best address the situation for all parties involved.
In regards to your account, if you believe that it’s possible a third-party has gained access to it, please complete the below steps immediately in order to secure your account.
Secure your account and devices
Your accounts may be vulnerable if your devices, browser, operating system, or apps are out-of-date. We recommend keeping your devices updated to protect your accounts.
Update the password for your email account login and enable any additional security features that your email service provider offers. This includes Two-Step Authentication, which is also known as Two-Factor Authentication.
Follow government guides to protect your identity and sensitive information.
Delete any personally identifiable documents or verification details shared via email. This can include photos of ID, credit card details, and other similar items (please note however that any items uploaded with Shopify’s Secure Upload tool are encrypted).
If you are using Shopify Payments for your payouts, verify that the correct bank account is connected for your payouts. If the bank account connected is not recognised, let our team know immediately.
Check all third-party gateway integrations to verify that the correct accounts are connected and setup as expected, for example PayPal Express checkout.
Review and update your Staff or Collaborator Accounts and their permissions, ensuring to review all Staff or Collaborator account permissions so that they only have access to the areas they need, especially staff with sensitive permissions.
Review your shop’s Activity Log for any unrecognised changes.
Review your store’s Settings including: Store Details, Checkout, Shipping and Delivery, Sales Channels, Domains, Notifications, and Files.
If there are any areas during your review that you need assistance with changing, please get in touch with our Live Support team here so that we can further help you. You’ll also need to speak with our Live Support team so that we can, if need be, get in touch with our internal accounts team to investigate your account in more detail.
I appreciate you giving me detailed information on the technical parts of what happened and feel a little better about it now that I know specifics. Hopefully it won’t be long. I also appreciate the info to secure my account further. I’ve already taken a couple of those steps before posting this and will continue to make sure my account is secure.
Hoping my domain is renewable through the team and soon.
I am losing traffic because of this situation and just recently re-launched my store to the public last Monday after being inactive for a few months then came over here from Etsy. I honestly don’t know much about the technical parts of how domains are renewed, and it seems like it would be a simple button click to manually renew. I thought wrong.
Not a problem, @kawaiimolds . I’m glad I was able to clarify a bit more about the domain situation, as well as provide best next steps for your account security.
I can definitely understand your concern in losing traffic during this time, but hopefully this is something that you can quickly build up and bounce back from once the domain is back and up running. Are you currently running any paid advertisements at the moment, to help drive traffic to your website? If you are, and if you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend pausing this for the time being, at least until your store’s domain is functioning and connecting as intended.
Apart from this, how are things going since transferring over from Etsy? The biggest difference with moving from a marketplace, like Etsy, to an ecommerce platform, like Shopify, would perhaps be the traffic. With Etsy, you might find that you won’t need to advertise as much, however with running an independent online store on Shopify, marketing your website will definitely help drive both traffic and sales to your store. We have a lot of different resources online that can help you implement a marketing strategy for your store, but I recommend starting with the resources below:
When shipping out new marketing campaigns, remember to also keep track of your analytics so that you’re aware of how your campaign is performing. This will allow you to understand which strategies and campaigns have worked more than others, and will help you tailor a marketing strategy that works best for your business. At the end of the day, all businesses require different plans and have different methods that work. Advertising also requires trial and error, so don’t be too discouraged if a particular ad you’re running isn’t performing as well as you’d hope it would be. Instead, view it as an opportunity to continue exploring other means of advertising that will work best for your business!
All the best, and let me know if there’s anything else that I can help with!
Thank you. Support reached out to me early this morning and said there was a $97 renewal fee. I paid it and am waiting to hear back from them so they can manually renew the domain.
I still keep my Etsy but direct customers to the website for a bigger selection and lower prices and also market for free on Instagram where I have a little over 11,000 followers. Word of mouth and personal messaging marketing has proven to be quite successful. However, what you’ve listed about marketing may be helpful to me so maybe I wouldn’t have to do as much legwork and get back to the creative manufacturing part of my business. Thank you for the information!
I thought wrong.
Thank you for the information!