Change the nameservers on a domain
Where to type them, how many a registry wants, and the two mistakes that leave a domain unreachable.
Updated 02 Sept 2026
Nameservers decide which machines answer questions about your domain. Change them and you move the whole zone — website, mail and everything else — to whoever runs those machines.
Where to change them
How many, and which
Two is enough for every extension we sell. More than two buys redundancy, not speed, and a fifth nameserver has never made a site load faster.
Two ways to make a domain unreachable
The first is circular delegation: pointing example.com at nameservers named under example.net, and example.net at nameservers named under example.com. Neither can be resolved without the other and both stop answering. Use nameservers under a third name, or under one of the two, never crossed.
The second is switching nameservers during a transfer. A domain with a transfer in progress will refuse the change. Finish the transfer first, then set the nameservers at the registrar that ends up holding it.
How long before the change takes effect?
The registry publishes within minutes. Resolvers that already asked keep the old answer until it expires, which in practice means most visitors see the change within an hour and some take longer. Nothing is lost meanwhile — they simply reach the old server. Choosing a shorter TTL beforehand shortens the tail.
Will my website go down while it changes?
Only if the new server has nothing on it yet. Upload the site and confirm it works before you point the domain, and visitors move from one working server to another. Our shared hosting gives you an address to test on before the domain is switched.