Domain suspended or on hold

Your site is offline. Your registrar or the TLD registry has placed a hold on the domain — DNS has stopped working. Contact your registrar today to find out why and ask them to lift it.

Symptom

• DomainDash marks the domain registration check as Down with error code domain_suspended_or_hold
• Your site is unreachable — visitors see "This site can't be reached" or a registrar parking page
• Running whois example.com shows one or more of: clientHold, serverHold, pendingDelete, or pendingRestore in the "Domain Status" section
• DNS lookups return NXDOMAIN because the domain has been removed from the zone

What it means

Domain registries and registrars can place status codes on a domain that prevent it from operating normally. The most disruptive of these are "hold" statuses — they cause the domain to be removed from the TLD zone, which means DNS stops working and your site goes offline, exactly as it would with an expired domain.

Understanding which status code you're dealing with tells you who placed the hold and what can fix it:

Status	Who placed it	Typical cause	How to resolve
clientHold	Your registrar	Billing, WHOIS compliance, abuse complaint	Contact registrar, resolve the issue
serverHold	The TLD registry	UDRP dispute, court order, legal hold	Legal advice usually required
pendingDelete	Registry	Post-expiry or post-dispute deletion queue	Emergency redemption, or accept loss
pendingRestore	Registry	Redemption in progress	Wait for registrar to complete
clientTransferProhibited	Your registrar	Normal protection against unauthorised transfers	No action needed — this is fine

If the only status codes you see are clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, or clientDeleteProhibited, your domain is healthy. These are standard protective codes, not suspensions.

Common causes

• Outstanding unpaid invoice on your registrar account
• WHOIS contact information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or hasn't been verified following a registrar request
• An abuse report or DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown complaint that the registrar is acting on
• A trademark dispute filed as a UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) complaint with ICANN
• A suspected security compromise — the registrar detected suspicious activity on your account or domain
• Domain transfer that was flagged as potentially unauthorised, triggering a hold while the registrar investigates

How to fix

1. Check the domain status in WHOIS. Run whois example.com and look for the Domain Status field. Note the exact status codes present — this tells you whether it's a registrar-level or registry-level hold.

2. Identify the reason for the hold. Contact your registrar's support team — the WHOIS record won't tell you why the hold was placed. Ask specifically which hold is in effect and what action you need to take to have it removed.

3. Resolve the underlying issue. For billing issues: pay the outstanding invoice. For WHOIS compliance: update your registrant contact information. For abuse or DMCA complaints: respond to the complaint through the registrar's process. For UDRP or court orders: get legal advice. For security compromises: change your password, enable two-factor authentication, and report the compromise to the registrar.

4. Request the hold to be lifted. Once the issue is resolved, ask the registrar to remove the hold. Billing and compliance issues are usually resolved within a few hours. pendingDelete is urgent — act now. The redemption window is short and fees can reach £160 or more.

5. Monitor propagation and verify in DomainDash. After the hold is lifted, run whois example.com again to confirm the status codes have changed. Then click "Check now" in DomainDash.

6. Prevent future holds. Keep billing up to date, maintain accurate WHOIS contact details, and enable two-factor authentication on your registrar account.

How to verify

After the hold is lifted:

1. Run whois example.com — the Domain Status section should no longer contain clientHold or serverHold. Standard codes like clientTransferProhibited are fine.

2. Wait 15–60 minutes for DNS to propagate, then run:

   dig example.com A +short @8.8.8.8

   You should see the domain resolving to an IP address.

3. Open the site in a browser and confirm it loads.

4. In DomainDash, go to the site's domain registration tab and click "Check now". The status should update from Down to Healthy.

If the hold has been lifted but DNS hasn't propagated yet, give it a couple of hours and check again. Registry zone updates can sometimes take longer to propagate than standard DNS changes.

Related

• Domain expired — if WHOIS shows an expired domain rather than a hold status
• WHOIS lookup failed — if DomainDash can't read the WHOIS record at all
• Domain registration — how DomainDash tracks domain status and what the checks look for
• How incidents work — how DomainDash opens and escalates incidents for domain registration failures