Two settings, often confused, with very different consequences. Changing the wrong one is how a website move takes email down.
The two-layer model
Nameservers decide which company answers questions about your domain. They are set at the registrar, on the domain itself.
DNS records are the answers that company gives — the A record for the website, the MX records for mail, TXT records for verification and mail authentication.
Nameservers are the address of the filing cabinet. DNS records are what is written on the pages inside it.
The rule
Change DNS records when you are moving one thing: pointing the website at a new server while email stays where it is, adding a verification record, changing a subdomain.
Change nameservers only when you are moving everything to a new DNS provider — and only after that provider already holds a complete copy of your records.
Why the wrong choice is destructive
Switching nameservers replaces every answer at once. If the new nameservers have a website record but no MX records, your website moves and your email stops. There is no warning, because from the DNS system's point of view nothing is broken — you simply have no mail servers listed any more.
This is the single most common self-inflicted outage we see. It is entirely avoidable.
The safe procedure for a nameserver change
- List every existing record at the current provider. Every A, CNAME, MX and TXT record, with values and priorities. Screenshot it.
- Recreate all of them at the new provider before changing anything at the registrar.
- Compare the two lists line by line. Pay particular attention to TXT records — mail authentication and third-party service verifications live there and are easy to overlook because nothing visibly breaks without them until later.
- Only then change the nameservers at the registrar.
- Do not delete the zone at the old provider for at least a week.
Where each is changed
Nameservers are changed in the Domains section of the client area, on the domain's management page. DNS records are changed wherever the nameservers point — which may be us, may be your hosting control panel, or may be a third party such as a CDN. If you are not sure which, check the nameservers first; they tell you where to go.
How long it takes
Nameserver changes propagate over hours, occasionally longer, because registry and resolver caches hold the old answer. Individual record changes propagate according to that record's TTL, which is typically much shorter. Lower a record's TTL several days before you plan to change it — lowering it at the moment of change achieves nothing.
If in doubt
Send us the domain and describe what you want to happen, not which setting you think needs changing. It takes us a minute to tell you and considerably longer to unpick a nameserver change made in the wrong order.
