I bought my trusty domain arjunkalburgi.com, exactly 4 years ago from GoDaddy. No one taught me about DNS or Domain Registrars, I needed a domain so I got one. For 4 years arjunkalburgi.com was my online home, and it worked great.
This year I decided to let my domain expire and pick it back up with another service. Over the four years I learned that GoDaddy wasn’t the best service and what’s the harm in switching?
Here’s the lesson: DNS Registrars have a shady business model (and online, GoDaddy is especially doubted).
Turns out that domains don’t just “expire”. If you miss your opportunity to renew (before your domain expires) the domain goes into a parked state but you can pay a hefty fee to get it back. If you cancel your domain, the registrar will “process” it for up to two months before letting it go back on the market. If you choose not to pay the fee, you’ll either have to switch domains or wait domainless for the processing to finish.
To switch services, the proper thing to do is to pay the transfer free to transfer your domain to another registrar.
Long story short, you can find my website at: https://askalburgi.github.io/
and yes, a lot of my apps and services are currently down until I fix them.
Edit
As of March 18 11AM MDT, I was able to purchase my domain from NameCheap. For just over 2.5 months I didn’t have a domain, but by moving to NameCheap I’m saving $15 CAD per year for the rest of my life. For the stress and the lesson, that money is totally worth it.