Revision as of 13:27, 27 May 2015

Domain Renewal Notices can be configured to be sent by WHMCS leading up to, and after a domain has expired. You can use these to remind and encourage your customers to renew their expiring domains with you.

Configuring When Renewal Notices Are Sent

As of WHMCS 5.3.12, in a new installation, Domain Renewal Notices are configured by default to meet the minimum requirements set out by ICANN for Expiration Reminder Notices by a domain registrar. At the time of writing, those are at least twice prior to expiration, and once following it.

You can however customise the intervals at which Domain Renewal Notices are sent in Setup > Automation Settings.

1. Begin by navigating to Setup > Automation Settings
2. Scroll to the Domain Reminder Settings section of the page
3. For each of the 5 possible reminders, you can enter a number of days and select either before or after from the dropdown menu to denote if it's to be sent the number of days specified before the next due date or after it
4. You can disable any reminder option by setting it to 0 (zero)

An example configuration is shown below where 3 notices have been setup prior to expiration at 60, 30 and 7 days, as well as one 3 days after the expiration. The fifth possible reminder option is disabled by setting it to zero (0).

Renewal Notice Recipients

Renewal notices are always sent to the registered email address of the client that owns a domain within WHMCS.

Registered Name Holder Notifications

Where a registrar module supports it, WHMCS will also send a copy of the renewal notices to the registered name holder as defined in the WHOIS Record for a given domain.

Please Note: This functionality is only available in specific domain registrar module(s) at this time. They include:

• Enom

More will be added in due course.

Customising the Renewal Notices

There are two email templates that are used for domain renewal notices. They are:

• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice - Used for notices sent prior to expiration
• Expired Domain Notice - Used for notices sent after expiration

These can be edited in the usual way in Setup > Email Templates.

For more information on customising email templates, please refer to the Email Templates documentation.

Email Syntax

The renewal reminders provide advanced variables allowing for the customisation of the domain renewal emails sent to clients. Under normal operation the renewal reminder email template can be left as default, but advanced users interested in customising it, the available options are summarised here.

• $days_until_expiry - Set when sending the reminder notice for 30 days or more on the 11th of the month. This is set to the value defined in the reminder settings.
• $expiring_domains - This is set when a reminder notice for 30 days or more is sent on the 11th of the month. This contains a list of the domains expiring "in the next" XX days. This is an array of information containing domainid, name, nextduedatem expirydate and days.
• $domains - Set for reminders of less than 30 days where more than one domain has the same next due date on the client account. This is populated with the domain information - domainid, name, nextduedate, expirydate.

Reviewing Renewal Notices That Have Been Sent

WHMCS maintains an indefinite log of all renewal notices that it sends to provide you with an audit trail which you can refer to, and export if needed.

It can be accessed from any Domains' Management page within the admin area:

1. Browse to a domain within the admin area
   1. Using search, the domains list, or by navigating to a Clients Profile and selecting a domain from there
2. Towards the bottom of the page, you'll see a Sent Domain Reminders section
3. If none are listed, no domain reminders have yet been sent for this domain
4. When domain reminders have been sent, you will see a list containing the following for each reminder that has been sent: date, reminder type, who it was sent to, and the number of days either prior to or after expiry it was sent for. See the screenshot below for an example.

You can export the Renewal Notices log in CSV format for use elsewhere by clicking the Export button shown below the log and then selecting Export to CSV which is available in the tools shown below the report log.

The Renewal Notices log can also be accessed directly via a report which you'll find in Reports > Other > Domain Renewal Emails. The report allows you to apply more detailed filters and includes the ability to filter by registrar as well as for a specific date range.