Question

What does the status soft quarantine mean?

Answer

Normally when a domain name is deleted it will immediately enter quarantine state. Most TLDs will charge a fee to reactivate a domain, for gTLDs this can go up to hundreds of dollars.

To reduce the impact of a domain that will expire, Openprovider introduced a functionality called soft quarantine. This means that when the domain name expires, it will no longer be active, but can be reactivated without additional fees.

To achieve this Openprovider use the renewal terms given to our suppliers. These are generally not exactly on the end of the validity period of the domain name and Openprovider can extend it without paying for it. Until the actual end-date is reached, Openprovider allows to reactivate the domain without additional (restore) fee aside from a year renewal of the domain name.

Between the point in time when the domain has expired in the resellers account and the moment prior to its deletion the nameservers of the domain will be changed to:

ina1.registrar.eu
ina2.registrar.eu 
ina3.registrar.eu

These nameservers contain their own zone and will show a landing page.

During the time that the domain is in soft quarantine the reseller can reactivate it via your control panel. Note that a the domain in soft quarantine cannot be unlocked. In order to transfer a domain out, it should be reactivated first.

The availability of soft quarantine is described on the extensions pages in the Knowledge Base and can be found under the paragraph "Detailed extension information" of each TLD.