Most businesses can’t say with certainty which domains they own, who they’re registered to, or what would happen if one lapsed. An audit answers all three.
Domain portfolios grow by accident. A campaign domain here, a rebrand there, a defensive registration someone made in 2019 and never mentioned. Each one is registered by whoever needed it at the time, on whatever account was to hand, and paid for on whichever card was in someone’s wallet.
Individually none of that matters. Collectively it becomes a portfolio nobody owns, nobody reviews and nobody can fully list — which is a problem, because it usually contains at least one domain the business genuinely cannot afford to lose.
What an audit tells you
What you actually own
A definitive list of every domain associated with your business — including the ones nobody remembered, and the ones people assume you own but don’t.
Who owns it on paper
The registrant name on a domain is what determines ownership in a dispute. We check whether each domain is registered to your company, to an individual, or to a supplier. Domains registered in a former employee’s or an old agency’s name are more common than most directors expect, and are far easier to correct now than during a fallout.
What’s at risk and when
Every expiry date in one place, with the ones that matter flagged. It’s worth knowing whether the domain your email runs on renews next month or in three years, and whether the reminder is going to an inbox anyone reads.
Where the single points of failure are
Which registrar, which DNS provider, which account, and how many people can access each. If one login held by one person controls everything, that’s worth knowing before that person is on holiday.
What you’re paying for twice
Redundant registrations, duplicate services across providers, and domains renewing every year that nobody has used since 2018. Audits frequently pay for themselves here.
Brand protection
The second half of an audit looks outward rather than inward: what’s registered around you, and what that exposes you to.
- Extension gaps. If you own the .co.uk but not the .uk or .com, somebody else can register them. Sometimes that’s a competitor. Sometimes it’s someone who noticed your business exists and expects you to buy it back.
- Typosquats. Close misspellings of your domain registered by third parties, used to intercept mistyped web traffic — and, more seriously, mistyped email. A single character difference is enough to receive an invoice intended for you.
- Lookalike domains used for fraud. Invoice redirection fraud typically starts with a domain that looks almost exactly like a supplier’s. Knowing which lookalikes exist is the first step to doing anything about it.
- Expired variants. Domains you once owned and let go, which are now registered to someone else and may still be receiving your mail.
Where we find something worth acting on, we’ll tell you what it would cost to register defensively and whether it’s worth it. Not every gap needs filling — part of the value of an audit is being told which risks you can reasonably ignore.
What you receive
A written report covering every domain we find, its registrant, registrar, expiry date, DNS configuration and security status, along with a plain-English list of what we’d recommend doing about it, in priority order. It’s written to be readable by someone who isn’t technical, because the people who need to act on it usually aren’t.
There’s no obligation to have us manage anything afterwards. Plenty of audits end with a business tightening up what it already has.
Why it’s worth doing now
The cheapest time to fix a domain registered in the wrong name is while everyone involved is still on good terms. The most expensive time is during a dispute, an acquisition or an exit — when ownership suddenly needs proving and the person named on the record no longer works for you.
Due diligence in any sale process will ask these questions. It’s considerably more comfortable to have the answers already.
Arrange an audit
Call 01202 835235 or email contact@domainwarden.co.uk. If you’d like to understand the wider case first, see why businesses have their domains professionally managed.