A website hosting change should not move your email by accident. Your website, email and other services can use different providers while sharing the same domain name. Before editing DNS, identify what needs to change and what must remain available.
1. Find where DNS is actually managed
The authoritative nameservers identify the provider publishing the domain’s active records. The company where you registered the domain is not necessarily where you edit those records. A zone visible in cPanel may not be the zone used publicly.
Confirm the active DNS provider with your administrator or our team. If Cloudflare or another provider manages DNS, make the changes there. In cPanel, use Zone Editor only when the relevant zone is actually managed there. To distinguish domains, hosting and aliases, see our domain guide.
2. Prepare the website and keep the current values
- Obtain the exact values from the new hosting provider: the name to change, record type and destination. Do not copy an IP address or nameservers from an old tutorial.
- Prepare the domain and files on the new hosting before switching traffic. Our guide to adding a domain in cPanel covers that step.
- Keep a private copy of current records, priorities and TTLs, along with the planned values. Retain access to the current provider while checking the result.
- For a store or application receiving data, plan the final synchronization of orders, submissions and files. Changing DNS does not copy any data.
3. Check email dependencies
If email stays with its current provider, preserve its MX records, the mail servers’ A/AAAA addresses and SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication entries. Also preserve discovery, verification and other records used by your services.
Check more than the MX records: a mail server may depend on the main domain or an alias you intend to change. Some SPF settings also depend on address or MX records. Have these dependencies confirmed before changing the website destination.
If Cloudflare manages the zone, names used for a conventional SMTP/IMAP connection should normally remain DNS only, following the email provider’s instructions. On cPanel hosting, also ask for the local or remote email-routing setting to be checked: a correct public DNS zone does not by itself prove that this local setting is correct.
4. Change only the necessary records
Website changes generally involve A (IPv4), AAAA (IPv6) or CNAME records for the domain and www. Check both names and both IP versions when present. An old AAAA record can still send some visitors to the previous server.
A CNAME points to a name, not an IP address or a URL containing https://. Do not create a combination that conflicts with existing records at the same name. For the main domain or a proxy/CDN configuration, confirm the expected method before replacing an entry.
Moving a website does not always require changing nameservers. If a nameserver change is planned, prepare the complete new zone and have DNSSEC and dependent services checked before switching. Do not reset the zone for a simple website change.
5. Verify the result and plan how to revert
TTL describes a caching duration. Lowering it in advance can help, but does not remove answers already cached with the old TTL. There is no single guaranteed delay for every visitor. If needed, see our DNS cache guide.
- Check the domain with and without www, the HTTPS certificate and important pages from more than one network where possible.
- Test a form and the functions your business relies on. A working homepage does not validate an entire store or application.
- Send and receive a test message with an external address. Also check website-form delivery if the site uses email.
- If a problem appears, retain the error and time. Reverting to the previous DNS values may be appropriate after checking, but remains subject to caches and does not reconcile data written to two sites.
Planning a move to Nuagerie? In your Client Area, identify the domain, current website and email providers, intended change and functions to preserve. Our team can help organize the switch and its checks. Do not include passwords or API keys in the request.
Official references: cPanel Zone Editor, cPanel Email Routing, Cloudflare email records and TTL and caching.
