Although it does work like that in some manner, it is actually a bit more complicated than that. In general owners have around 1-75 days to renew a domain once it expires but mostly towards the higher end of that range.
Interestingly around 120,000 domains expire every single day with around 50,000 of those eventually coming up for anyone to register.
It is also worth noting that .com domains get deleted/made available to renew every day between 11am and 2pm pacific time in batches.
The Life Cycle Of A Domain
There are five stages to a domain's life cycle-
It is important that you understand each phase.
Stage 1- Active
This means the domain is currently registered and active. You cannot register a domain that is active.It possible to register domains from 1-10 years and then many domain owners have them set to auto renew at the end of their expiration period.
Stage 2 - Expired Holding
Period Once a domain reaches it's expiration date it is held by the registrar for anywhere between 1-45 days. At this point any associated website stops working, but the domain is still available to renew to the originalowner.
Stage 3 - Expired Redemption Grace Period
The next stage of the expiration process is the renewal grace period which typically lasts for around 30 days. At this point any Whois data is deleted.This gives the original owner a last chance to register the domain before it gets moved into the pending deletion queue.
Stage 4 - Pending Delete
Once a domain reaches the pending delete phase it can no longer be renewed by the original owner or anyone else.During this period the domain is erased entirely from the ICANN database.
