Gabriel some of my clients registered their own domain and I can’t have visibility of the renewal dates. Sounds trivial but one of the mos recurring issues with clients with their own domain is that they would not renew it even after receiving 4 notices, so they call me in a hurry or I call them the minute I receive a website down notification, which is stressful and totally preventable.

It’s not critical but a nice feature to have I would say…

Akira Zabala This sounds completely reasonable if the domain would expire, but this isn't the case as I wrote. Domains are renewed automatically without doing anything. In which case domains are deleted without action of an owner? Could you give an example of a case where this applies? In which country you reside / which provider defaults to auto-expiring domains? In Germany there isn‘t one single provider that offer that option.

Gabriel I’m currently in Argentina, where ALL my clients domains that I manage are turned off for auto renewal because of the risk of them not paying for the renewal. Economical instability here makes auto renewal of some services notably more risky than other established markets.

Of course I can take down any not payed-for services, but I like to focus more on let them know in advance and preventing any time sensitive friction.

Akira Zabala Ok I see, totally different than in Europe / Germany. It‘s activated by default and all customers do not deactivate auto-renewal. But for your country / providers this would be absolutely reasonable!

Gabriel I believe you are not seeing it from a general point of view, as one of the biggest benefits of this feature is proactiveness, even if your servers are up for automatic renewal, you, as the site's webmaster, inform the client that their domain is being renewed, or close to expiry, this brings you great professionalism.

Furthermore, I also have many clients who register domains per account, and on several different servers, and do not leave the automatic renewal active, as there are also clients who register 5 to 10 domains, and then do not want to renew the others, just the main one, There are several cases, you cannot generalize.

Furthermore, this automatic renewal is flawed, because if the customer renewed the card and did not update it on the panel, the renewal will not be carried out, and email communication is often lost.

You have to see it from a professional point of view. Leaving such an important thing in the hands of the provider alone, and you as a webmaster doing nothing, is really confusing. Even my clients who have automatic renewal contracted, I monitor it through my calendar, so as not to let it go unnoticed, firstly, this shows proactivity, and secondly, in many cases it has happened that the card has been declined, for various reasons, limit, expiration date, security, card temporary, etc.

Bruno A. I agree, this is a nice feature to have, but in my country not absolutely necessary and I registered in the last 2 decades hundreds of domains or had customers with a lot of domains and this subject played no role at all / never had any problems with domain renewals. Furthermore the announcement of automatic renewal is sent automatically to the client and CC to me. As said in Germany all providers have the domain opt-out, you always have to actively cancel, auto-renewal is set by default. And I don´t know one provider which offers card payment, because the standard payment method is SEPA-direct debit with hosting plans or domain registration.

There are some very important features that are still missing from Umbrella that are higher in my priority, but there are a lot of different conditions in different countries.

Gabriel I understood. In this case, I believe it does not really apply to you or your region, but here in Brazil it is a recurring problem, and in my opinion, it can continue like this here, as it is an operation in which we maintain control over renewals, in addition to maintain control over your own money, because with the card you have more control and security, paying directly into an account is not something I like. Here we also have automatic renewal via credit card or automatic payment directly to the account (DDA: Authorized direct debit) but I personally don't like to leave anything related to automatic payment, I leave everything disabled by default, this is for me, but for customers, each has its own management. This function will be very useful for me.

Bruno A. As I said this would be very useful and I hope it could be integrated. Just for your understanding: I have close contacts in Brazil and am familiar with the payment system and other practices etc. Unlike many other countries, the companies in Germany that are not sole proprietors do not pay by credit card because this is not organizationally possible. Credit cards can only be issued to one person and not to one company. That's why companies always pay with an invoice or direct debit or similar.

Gabriel I understand, it's really cool to know.

Bruno A. Most important: This feature is indicated as "in progress". Let´s hope that it will be available soon.

Gabriel Very cool. I'm anxiously waiting here.