If your business has a .com.au, .net.au or .au domain, the rules around keeping it just changed. From 20 May 2026, auDA only renews your domain if the ABN or ACN attached to it is current and active on the Australian Business Register. If it is not, the renewal is blocked and the domain can be deleted, which takes your website and your business email down with it.
We have already had a handful of Sydney clients ask us this week whether their site is at risk. The honest answer for most Australian small businesses is: probably not, but you should check today rather than the day before renewal.
What changed on 20 May 2026
For years, auDA’s licensing rules said you needed an active ABN or ACN to hold a .au domain. The rule was real, but the enforcement was patchy. Registrars often did not verify the ABN was still active years after you first registered the domain.
That has now tightened. auDA confirmed that from 20 May 2026, registrars must check the registered ABN or ACN against the Australian Business Register inside the 90-day renewal window. If the identifier is missing, cancelled, or does not match the registrant on record, the renewal is blocked.
A few specifics worth knowing:
- The check is run by your registrar at renewal, not continuously. You do not need to panic if you saw an “ABN inactive” message somewhere else recently.
- The same rule applies across the whole .au namespace: .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .id.au and .au direct.
- Trust-held domains have an extra wrinkle. Under the updated rules, a domain cannot sit in the name of the trust itself. It must be held by the trustee, whether that is a person, a company, or a partnership.
- Trademark-based eligibility is being tightened separately later in 2026. If your domain is held against a trademark rather than an ABN, watch this space.
These rules were summarised by major Australian registrars and reviewed by law firm MinterEllison, who described them as the most material change to .au eligibility enforcement in years.
Why this matters for your business
A .com.au address is one of the few real trust signals an Australian small business has online. Customers expect it, Google’s local results favour it, and your email runs on it.
If your domain goes into “renewal blocked” status, three things happen at once:
- The website connected to the domain stops resolving. Visitors see an error, not your homepage.
- Email addresses on the domain stop receiving and sending. Quotes, invoices, enquiry forms and order confirmations bounce silently.
- Your Google Business Profile and any directory listings that point to the dead URL start to lose trust signals. Even after you recover the domain, ranking can take weeks to come back.
For most small businesses we work with, an unplanned half-day of website and email downtime is the difference between a normal Friday and a very expensive one. We saw one Brisbane retailer last year lose three days of orders because their domain quietly expired during the owner’s leave. With the new rules, that same scenario can now happen even when the credit card on file is valid, simply because the ABN was cancelled after a restructure.
How to check if your .au domain is at risk in five minutes
You do not need a developer for this. Anyone in the business can run through the following.
- Find the ABN or ACN your domain is registered under. Log in to your domain registrar’s control panel (Crazy Domains, VentraIP, GoDaddy, Netregistry and similar) and open the domain record. The ABN or ACN sits in the registrant or eligibility fields.
- Look that ABN up on the Australian Business Register. Go to abr.business.gov.au and search by ABN or business name.
- Check the status. It needs to say “Active”. If it says “Cancelled”, or you cannot find the entity at all, you have a problem to fix before renewal.
- Check the entity name matches. The legal name on the ABR should match the registrant name on the domain. If you changed business structure, sold the business, or moved from a sole trader to a Pty Ltd, the two often drift apart.
- Check your renewal date. Domains usually fall into the 90-day renewal window three months before expiry. If you are inside that window with a broken ABN link, treat it as urgent.
Risk table: which businesses are most exposed
| Situation | Risk level | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Sole trader, active ABN, registered the domain under that ABN | Low | Confirm ABN status on ABR; no action otherwise |
| Pty Ltd, active ACN, ACN listed on domain | Low | Same: confirm and move on |
| Sole trader who later moved to a company, but the domain is still under the old sole-trader ABN | High | Transfer the domain to the new entity before renewal |
| Business that closed and reopened under a new ABN | High | Update the registrant or transfer the domain |
| Trust-held domains where the trust itself is the registrant | High | Move the registration to the trustee (person, company, or partnership) |
| Domains held under a cancelled ABN | Critical | Reactivate the ABN or transfer the domain immediately |
| Domains held via a trademark only | Medium | Watch for the upcoming trademark eligibility tightening and document the link |
If your situation lands in the High or Critical row, do not wait. The renewal block happens automatically and is much harder to unwind than to prevent.
How to fix it before renewal
Three common paths depending on what the lookup tells you.
Your ABN is active and matches. You are done. Note the renewal date in your calendar so someone in the business is paying attention to it next year.
Your ABN is cancelled but the entity still exists. Reapply for the ABN through the ATO. Reactivation is usually free and can be processed in a day or two for straightforward cases. Once the ABR shows “Active” again, your registrar can renew the domain.
The domain belongs to an entity that no longer exists. This is the painful one. You need to transfer the domain to the entity that owns the business today, which typically means updating the registrant details and providing evidence that you are eligible to take it over. The exact steps differ by registrar, and the safest approach is to start the transfer well before your renewal window, not inside it.
A note on hosting and email
The new rules are about the domain licence, not your hosting or email service. But the practical effect is the same: if the domain stops resolving, your hosted website and your hosted email are dark until it is fixed. This is one of the reasons we include domain and DNS monitoring in our WordPress care plan. If the registrant details look wrong, we flag it before the renewal window opens, not after the renewal has already been rejected.
What we are recommending to clients this week
Three small jobs that take less than an hour combined.
If you have a WordPress care plan with us, reply to your last monthly report and we will run the check for you and confirm in writing that the domain is in the clear.
Run the ABR lookup against every .au domain your business owns, including any old marketing or campaign domains that still point at your main site.
Make sure the email address your registrar has on file is one that someone actively reads. Renewal warnings go there.
FAQ
When did the new .au domain renewal rules start? The new auDA renewal rules came into effect on 20 May 2026. From that date, auDA checks the ABN or ACN linked to every .au domain at renewal time, and blocks the renewal if it is not active.
Will my .com.au domain be cancelled automatically? Not at the moment you log in. The new compliance check only runs inside the 90-day renewal window. But if your ABN is inactive at that point, your registrar cannot renew the domain and it can be deleted shortly after expiry.
What happens to my website and email if the domain is deleted? Your website goes offline and any email addresses on that domain stop working. Bringing the domain back is sometimes possible during a grace period, but it is not guaranteed and any downtime hits sales and customer trust immediately.
How do I check if my ABN is still active? Search your business name or ABN on ABN Lookup at abr.business.gov.au. If the status reads “Active”, you are fine. If it says “Cancelled” or the ABN is not found, you need to reactivate or replace it before your domain renewal window opens.
Do these rules apply to .au, .com.au and .net.au? Yes. The auDA licensing rules apply across the .au namespace, including .au direct, .com.au, .net.au, .org.au and the other open second-level domains.
Want a second pair of eyes on your domain and hosting setup?
If you are not sure whether your .au domain is safe under the new rules, or you have a few domains and no idea which entity each one sits under, we can take a look. Our team runs a free website audit that covers domain registration, hosting, backups, and the parts of WordPress that quietly break in the background. Drop us a line and we will come back within one business day with a clear picture of where you stand. No jargon, no pressure.