Is renewing domain names for free — Google Domains

Select clients who turn on auto renew by July 11 get a free one year renewal.

Google Domains, Google’s newish domain name registration service, is renewing domain names for free.

The firm sent an email to some of its clients today, offering to renew their domain names free for a year if they turn on auto renew.

The offer only applies to domain names registered ahead of June 21, so you can’t register domain names today and get two years for one. Still, for domains registered prior to that date, all clients have to do is turn on auto renew by July 11.

When the domains renew, clients will be billed for the full renewal price, but they’ll receive a refund within 2-3 weeks.

The fine print: only Google Domains clients who received an email with the offer get the free renewal. My guess is it was only sent to people who registered domain names and haven’t activated auto renew yet.

I ought to note that I only have one .com domain registered with Google Domains, so it’s possible the offer was targeted to people with few domains, and it might be limited to certain top level domain names.

The deal is good for clients, and it’s also good for the registries that will get higher renewal rates.