clientHold: What It Means & How to Fix It
clientHold is one of the few status codes that takes your domain offline. Per ICANN, it tells the registry not to activate your domain in the DNS — as a consequence, it will not resolve. Website down, email dead, everything pointing at the domain stops working.
ICANN calls it an uncommon status, usually enacted during legal disputes, non-payment, or when the domain is subject to deletion. In practice, the most common trigger by far is failed WHOIS/contact email verification under ICANN's registrar rules.
What clientHold means
Your registrar instructed the registry to pull the domain's delegation from the TLD zone. The registration still exists — you still own the domain — but the DNS root of the TLD no longer answers for it, so nothing that depends on the name resolves.
The "client" prefix is the useful part: your registrar set this, which means your registrar can remove it, usually quickly, once the underlying cause is addressed.
Is it good or bad news?
Bad news that's usually fixable in hours. The common causes, roughly in order of frequency: unverified registrant email (ICANN requires registrars to verify contact data — miss the verification email and many registrars suspend the domain), non-payment or a failed renewal charge, abuse or spam complaints, and legal disputes.
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How to fix it
- •Check your inbox (and spam) for a verification email from your registrar — clicking that link resolves the most common cause, often within minutes to hours.
- •Log in to your registrar and look for account notices, unpaid invoices, or suspension banners.
- •If nothing is obvious, contact support and ask specifically why clientHold was applied and what's required to lift it.
- •For abuse-related holds, expect to remediate (remove malware, stop the offending activity) and provide evidence before the hold is lifted.
- •After removal, allow time for DNS propagation — the domain returns to the TLD zone, then resolvers pick it up.
clientHold vs serverHold
serverHold is the same outage imposed by the registry rather than your registrar — typically for issues at the registry or TLD-policy level. The fix path differs: your registrar can lift clientHold directly, but must work with the registry to clear serverHold. If your domain matters, monitoring for these two codes is the difference between hearing about an outage from your tooling or from your customers — Sourdough's portfolio tracker watches status codes via live RDAP, with a 7-day free trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did my domain stop resolving with clientHold?
clientHold removes your domain from the TLD's DNS zone, so nothing can look it up. The most frequent causes are failed registrant email verification, non-payment, abuse complaints, or a pending deletion.
How long does it take to remove clientHold?
Once the cause is fixed, registrars can usually lift it the same day — email-verification holds often clear within an hour of clicking the link. Then add normal DNS propagation time before everything resolves again.
Do I still own a domain that's on clientHold?
Yes. The registration is intact; only DNS activation is suspended. But holds tied to non-payment or deletion can precede real loss, so resolve the cause promptly.