Spectate
Domains

Domain monitoring

Domain monitoring watches the registration of your domains at the registry. Spectate reads the expiry date, the registrar, the nameservers and the DNSSEC records every 6 hours. It alerts your team before a domain expires, and when its registration changes.

Add a domain

Owners, managers and admins can add domains.

  1. In the dashboard, go to Domains.
  2. Select Add domain.
  3. In Domain, type the registered domain, for example example.com. Do not type https://, a path or a subdomain.
  4. To add the domain paused, clear Start monitoring immediately.
  5. Select Add domain.

Spectate looks up the domain at once. The domain joins the team's default project. Domain names with non-ASCII characters, such as bücher.de, are also accepted.

Domains do not count towards the monitors and hosts of your plan. Every paid plan and the trial include an unlimited number of domains.

How Spectate finds registry data

Spectate asks the registry of the domain's top-level domain (TLD) in this order:

  1. RDAP, through the IANA list of RDAP servers. This covers every generic TLD, such as .com and .net, and many country TLDs.
  2. RDAP, through Spectate's list of other country registries, such as .de, .ch, .io, .me and .us.
  3. WHOIS on port 43, for registries without RDAP.

The domain page shows which source the data came from. Spectate limits how often it asks each registry. If a registry asks Spectate to wait, the lookup waits and does not count as a failure.

What the dashboard shows

The Domains page lists each domain with its Registrar, Nameservers, DNSSEC state and Expires date. The filters are All, At risk (expired, or expiring within the alert threshold), No DNSSEC and Paused.

The domain page shows:

  • Expires: the expiry date and the time left.
  • Registered, Last changed, Registry updated and Tracking since.
  • The Registrar, the DNSSEC state (Signed, Unsigned or Unknown) and Last check.
  • Nameservers: the nameservers at the registry.
  • EPP statuses: the status codes of the registry, such as clientTransferProhibited.
  • DNSSEC records: the DS records at the registry.
  • Change history: the registry and expiry alerts of the domain.

Domains without registry data

Some registries publish less data, or none. The dashboard then shows one of these messages:

MessageMeaning
No registry dataThe registry publishes neither RDAP nor WHOIS, so Spectate cannot track expiry or the registrar. About 50 country TLDs are like this, for example .gr and .vn.
Not publishedThe registry does not publish expiry dates. Spectate still tracks the registrar, nameservers and status. Examples are .de, .nl, .eu, .be, .at, .lu and .ch.
Not registeredThe registry has no record of the domain. Check the spelling, and enter the registered domain, not a subdomain.
RetryingThe registry did not answer the last lookup, after 5 tries. Spectate tries again later.

The API returns these states in registry_error as unsupported, not_registered and unavailable. registry_source is rdap or whois.

Pause a domain

A paused domain keeps its registry data, but Spectate does not look it up again and does not fire alerts.

  1. Open the domain and go to Settings.
  2. Clear Monitoring enabled.
  3. Select Save changes.

To start again, select Monitoring enabled. If the team's monitoring is paused, you cannot start a domain again. See plans and billing.

Delete a domain

Owners, managers and admins can delete domains.

  1. Open the domain and go to Settings.
  2. Under Danger zone, select Delete domain.
  3. Type the domain name to confirm.
  4. Select Delete domain.

Spectate stops the checks of the domain at once, and the domain no longer shows in the dashboard or the API. Nothing changes at the registrar. After 7 days, Spectate permanently deletes the domain with its registry data and its alerts. Incidents stay.

In the first 7 days, Spectate support can restore the domain. Send an email to help@spectate.net.

Related

Metric conditionsDomain checks