How to point a domain to your hosting

Change the nameservers

Hands the whole domain to the host: they manage every record from then on. Simplest when the site and the email are moving to the same place.

Change the A record

Keeps your current DNS and changes one answer — where the website lives. Right when the email is staying where it is, which is more often than people assume.

If you are not sure which you want, ask yourself one question: is the email moving too? Yes, nameservers. No, A record.

1. Get the details from your host. Either their nameservers, or the server IP address 2. Log in to your registrar and find the DNS or nameserver settings for the domain 3. Make the change — replace the nameservers, or edit the A record for @ and www 4. Wait. Minutes to a few hours, depending on the TTL 5. Check the site loads, then send and receive a test email

If both the domain and the hosting are with us, none of this is needed — it is already done when the account is created.

This is where it goes wrong, and it goes wrong the same way every time.

Before you change nameservers, write down every existing record. A, CNAME, MX and especially the TXT records holding SPF and DKIM. The new nameservers start empty, and anything you did not copy across simply stops existing.

The failure is quiet: mail does not bounce back to you, it bounces to the sender, so the first you hear is a customer asking why you never replied. If the email is staying put, change the A record instead and leave the nameservers alone.

• Load the site in a private window, which skips your browser cache
• Check from a phone on mobile data, which uses a different resolver from your office
• Send an email out and get one back. Both directions, because they fail independently
• Give it a few hours before worrying; caches expire at different times for different people

Still wrong after a day? Send us the domain and what you changed, and we will look at the records.