DNS runbook · Beginner · 10 min plus TTL
How to point a domain to your hosting — Delegate or Point: Two Routes, Two Recovery Times
You need the domain serving from the new account without stranding the mail records that are still answering at the old provider.
The short answer
There are two routes, and the choice decides where your records live afterwards. Change the nameservers and the whole zone moves here. Change a single A record and everything else — MX, SPF, TXT, CAA — stays exactly where it is.
Pick delegation when you want one place to edit records and do not mind rebuilding the zone. Pick the A record when mail is working somewhere else and you would rather not touch it. Either way, read the current TTL before you start, because that number is your recovery time if the change is wrong.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
Beginner
Skill floor
Quick
Hands-on time
5
Steps in total
24/7
Support on call
You need access to the registrar or DNS host for the domain, plus the account details from the client area. Ten minutes of work, then a wait bounded by the old TTL rather than by anything either provider does.
Every field named below exists in cPanel and the client area as printed. The change is reversible in both directions, though the reverse also costs one TTL, which is the argument for lowering it first.
Two mechanisms, and how to tell which you want
Delegation is a change at the registrar: you replace the nameserver pair, and from then on this platform answers every query for the domain. That gives you one editor for A, MX, TXT and CAA, and it means anything you do not recreate here stops existing.
The A record route leaves delegation where it is and changes one answer inside the existing zone. Web traffic arrives here; mail, verification tokens and everything else carry on at the current DNS host. It is the smaller blast radius, and the right choice when someone else is running the mail.
Read the TTL before you touch anything
Run dig +noall +answer yourdomain.com and dig NS yourdomain.com and write down the numbers in the TTL column. That is how long resolvers will keep serving the old answer after you change it, and therefore how long a mistake lasts.
If the number is 14400 you have a four-hour rollback. Lower the records you plan to change to 300 first, wait out one full old TTL, and only then make the switch. The wait costs nothing and it converts a four-hour outage risk into a five-minute one.
Where delegation strands the mail
The commonest failure on this job is a clean delegation with no MX records behind it. Web pages load beautifully, and inbound mail either bounces or is silently accepted by a server that no longer holds the mailboxes. SPF, DKIM selectors, DMARC and every verification TXT record go the same way.
So before you change nameservers, export the current zone: every A, AAAA, CNAME, MX with its priority, TXT, SRV and CAA row. Build all of it here first, confirm it answers when you query the new nameservers directly, and only then move the delegation.
What the account does once it answers
As soon as the hostname resolves here, AutoSSL issues a certificate and keeps renewing it, LiteSpeed starts caching in front of NVMe storage, and the PHP version for that site becomes a dropdown rather than a config file.
Support is on at any hour if the parent zone refuses to update or a certificate will not validate, and the answer will be the actual cause rather than a link to an article you have already read.
The stack these steps were measured on
Every walkthrough here is run against the platform we operate — cPanel, LiteSpeed in front of NVMe, Softaculous, WP-CLI over SSH — so the field names in the instructions are the field names on your screen.
Already hosted somewhere slower? Our engineers migrate the whole site free, usually within 24 hours, and it keeps serving visitors throughout.
- Both routes described, not just the easy one
- TTL treated as the recovery time it is
- Verification commands, not hopeful refreshing
- Engineers on support at any hour
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
Both routes, honestly compared
Delegation and the single A record are described with what each one leaves behind, so you can pick on blast radius rather than on habit.
TTL as a first-class number
The page treats TTL as your rollback window and tells you how to shorten it before the change rather than after.
The mail failure named early
Stranded MX records are the classic outcome here, and the fix is in the sequence rather than in a footnote.
5 steps, no padding
Each step is one action with a check attached, and the wait is described as a wait rather than dressed up as work.
Verified from outside
The final step queries a resolver you do not control, because your own browser is the least reliable witness you have.
Engineers on call
If the parent zone will not take the change, support is staffed at any hour and will tell you which side is stalling.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Export the current zone and note its TTLs
Query the existing DNS host for every record type — A, AAAA, CNAME, MX with priorities, TXT, SRV, CAA — and save the output. Record the TTL on each row; the largest one is how long a bad change will last.
- 2
Choose delegation or a single A record
If you want one place to edit everything and are prepared to rebuild the zone, change the nameservers. If mail is answering elsewhere and you only need web traffic moved, change the A record and leave the rest untouched.
- 3
Lower the TTL, then wait out the old one
Set the records you are about to change to 300 seconds and leave them for at least the duration of the previous TTL. Resolvers then hold a short-lived answer at the moment you make the real change, which is what makes rollback quick.
- 4
Copy the values exactly and apply them at the registrar
Paste the nameserver pair or the IP address from the client area rather than retyping it, replace the full existing set rather than adding to it, and save. A single transposed digit in an IPv4 address is an hour you will not enjoy.
- 5
Verify from outside, then check the certificate
Run dig A yourdomain.com @1.1.1.1 and dig NS yourdomain.com @8.8.8.8 to confirm a resolver you do not control agrees. Then curl -sI https://yourdomain.com and confirm the TLS handshake completes and the certificate names the host.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- Free migration: our engineers move the existing site
- Mailboxes that run on your own domain name
- 99.9% uptime as the target, monitored around the clock
- No setup fee on any plan, at any tier
- Free SSL on every plan, renewed before it can lapse
- Support staffed by humans, every hour of the day
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP
- Staging environments for testing before you ship
- WordPress Toolkit, with updates applied for you
- WebP conversion built in, at no extra cost
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
Can I put a CNAME on the bare domain?
No. DNS forbids a CNAME coexisting with the SOA and NS records that have to exist at the apex, so a CNAME on yourdomain.com is invalid even where a panel lets you save it. Use an A record at the apex and a CNAME on www, or an ALIAS or ANAME record if your DNS host offers one, which flattens the lookup server-side.
How do I confirm the certificate arrived after the switch?
Ask the connection rather than the browser. curl -sI https://yourdomain.com shows whether the handshake completed at all, and openssl s_client -connect yourdomain.com:443 -servername yourdomain.com prints the issuer, the SAN list and the expiry date. AutoSSL needs the hostname to resolve here first, so run it after DNS has settled, not before.
The site loads for me but not for a colleague. What is stale?
Almost always a cache between them and the authoritative server: their operating system resolver, their ISP resolver, or a hosts file entry from an earlier test. Have them run dig A yourdomain.com and compare the TTL to yours. If the countdown is still running they are holding the old answer, and the only cure is waiting it out or flushing locally.
Does pointing the domain here move my email as well?
Only if you change the nameservers and then create MX records here. Changing a single A record leaves mail exactly where it is. Changing delegation without recreating MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC moves your mail nowhere and breaks it everywhere, which is why the zone export is step one rather than step four.
Keep reading
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TLD (Top-Level Domain) (Glossary)
The definition this page leans on, with the resolver path spelled out.
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