Comparison
The best domain monitoring tools for expiry and renewals
Five tools that will email you before a domain expires, compared on what they cost, where their data comes from and what they alert on. We make one of them, so this page says plainly where each of the others is the better pick.
Disclosure: DropPerch is our product. Every fact about the other four tools below comes from their own pricing and help pages, linked at the bottom and checked on 12 October 2026. If one of them has changed since, the source links are the authority, not this page.
Which one fits which job
- You want uptime, SSL and domain expiry in one tool: UptimeRobot if you need Slack, Teams, SMS or on-call integrations; Watchman Tower if price matters most, from $5.99 a month for 50 sites.
- You want domains, uptime, DNS and cron jobs together, cheaply: Domain Monitor, £7.99 a month for 75 domains.
- You want a domain list with Slack, Discord or Telegram alerts and nameserver change alerts: Domain Watchman, free for 20 domains and $14 a month for 200.
- You want a domain list read from the registry daily, with alerts on redemption, hold and pending delete: DropPerch, free for 25 domains for the first 25 accounts (5 after) and $12 a month for unlimited.
Side by side
| DropPerch | UptimeRobot | Watchman Tower | Domain Watchman | Domain Monitor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Domain expiry and registry status, nothing else | Uptime monitoring; domain expiry is a feature of its website monitors | Website monitoring: uptime, SSL and domain expiry together | Domain registration monitoring | All-in-one monitoring: domains, uptime, SSL, DNS, cron jobs |
| Free plan | 25 domains for the first 25 accounts, 5 after; no card | 50 monitors, but domain expiry monitoring is for paid plans only | 10 websites | 20 domains | 1 domain (2 uptime monitors) |
| Paid plans | $12/month or $120/year, unlimited domains. Agency $39/month adds a weekly report per client | Solo from $10/month for 10 monitors ($9/month billed annually); Team $41/month for 100 | Solo $5.99/month (50 sites), Team $19.99 (100), Stack $59.99 (500); two months free yearly | Pro $14/month or $108/year for 200 domains | Pro £7.99/month for 75 domains and 75 monitors |
| Where expiry data comes from | The registry itself, over RDAP | WHOIS records | Public WHOIS and RDAP records | WHOIS data | Described as WHOIS lookups |
| How often it is re-checked | Every domain, every day | Not published | At least weekly; daily inside the last 30 days | Not published | Not published |
| Expiry reminders | 30, 14, 7 and 1 days before expiry | 30, 14 and 7 days before, and on the expiry date | 30, 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before, and the day after | Alerts when expiry is near; days not published | Not published |
| Alerts on registry status (hold, redemption, pending delete) | Yes — on hold, redemption, pending delete and release | Not described | Not described | Yes — alerts when the status changes | Not described |
| Alert channels | Email, one digest a day | Email, SMS, voice; Slack, Teams, Telegram, webhooks and Zapier on paid plans | Email and mobile push; Slack and SMS from the Team plan | Email, Slack, Discord, Telegram | Email, Slack, Discord, webhooks, Pushover; SMS on Pro |
| Also monitors | Nothing — no uptime or SSL checks | Uptime, SSL, keywords, ports and more | Uptime, SSL, servers, WordPress | Nameserver changes, registrant changes, availability | Uptime, SSL, DNS, keywords, cron jobs |
Other vendors' details are from their own published pages, checked 12 October 2026. Sources are listed at the end of this page.
Three things worth checking in any of them
1. Where the date comes from
Most tools read WHOIS, a protocol ICANN has been retiring for generic TLDs since January 2025 in favour of RDAP. WHOIS data is usually right. When it is wrong, it tends to be wrong in the weeks around a renewal or an expiry — the moment you are relying on it. Ask whether the tool reads the registry or a copy; the RDAP vs WHOIS guide explains why it matters.
2. Whether it watches states, not just dates
An expiry reminder warns you before the date. It says nothing about what happens after: the auto-renew grace period, the 30-day redemption period with its restore fee, and the five-day pending delete that ends in the domain being released. A tool that alerts on those states catches the failed renewal; a tool that only counts down to the date does not. The domain expiry lifecycle guide walks through each stage.
3. What counts against your limit
Website monitors count websites. If you hold domains that are not websites — brand variants, typo domains, redirects, names kept for later — each still uses a monitor slot, and some tools only attach expiry checks to a website monitor at all. A domain-first tool counts domains.
A note on uptime monitoring
DropPerch does not check whether a site is up, and does not watch SSL certificates. If you need those, one of the other four does them well, and running a website monitor alongside DropPerch is common. If you only need the domains watched, a website monitor charges you for checks you will not use.
Want to check a list right now? The free bulk domain expiry checker reads up to 100 domains from their registries in one go, no signup.
Sources
Checked . Prices and plans change; where this page and a vendor's own page disagree, theirs is right.
- UptimeRobot pricing
- UptimeRobot help: domain expiration monitoring
- Watchman Tower pricing
- Watchman Tower: domain expiry monitoring
- Domain Watchman pricing
- Domain Watchman features
- Domain Monitor pricing
- Domain Monitor features
Common questions
What is the best free domain expiry monitoring tool?
It depends on how many domains and what else you need. DropPerch is free for 25 domains for the first 25 accounts and 5 after, with registry status alerts; Domain Watchman is free for 20; Watchman Tower is free for 10 websites including uptime. UptimeRobot does not include domain expiry monitoring on its free plan.
Do domain expiry monitors use WHOIS or RDAP?
Most use WHOIS. Watchman Tower reads both WHOIS and RDAP. DropPerch reads RDAP directly from each registry. RDAP has replaced WHOIS as the required protocol for generic TLDs since January 2025.
Do I need a domain monitor if my registrar sends renewal emails?
Registrar emails go to whichever address is on the account, which is often an old employee or a mailbox nobody reads, and they stop if the domain moves registrar. A monitor watches the registry directly, so it works across every registrar you use.
Try it on your own domains
DropPerch reads each domain from its registry every day and emails you before it expires, and the moment one goes on hold, into redemption or pending delete. Any registrar, no transfer.