How to change a DNS record without breaking your site or email

Find who runs your DNS

Records are edited where your nameservers point, and that is often not the company you pay for the domain. Open Google's Dig tool, choose NS, type your domain without www and read the names it returns:

We ran this lookup on the 1,060 sites in our public audit showcase on 28 September 2026; 1,051 answered. The rows above cover 64% of them, and the other 36% are spread over 185 more companies, none of them above 1%. The sample is sites that went through our audit, not the web at large, but the order is a fair guide to where you are likely to end up.

Two cases catch people out. A domain bought at Google Domains before 2023 was moved to Squarespace, yet it still answers from ns-cloud-*.googledomains.com: the records are edited in Squarespace Domains, and there is no Google panel for them anymore. And a domain on Cloudflare nameservers is edited at Cloudflare even if you bought and renew it elsewhere: changing the record at the registrar does nothing, because nobody asks the registrar.

Before you touch anything

• Copy the current value of the record you are about to change, character for character, or take a screenshot of the row. It is the whole of your undo plan.
• Change one record, the one you were given. Nameservers, MX records (email), and TXT records (email authentication, Google and Microsoft verification) stay as they are. Changing nameservers moves every record at once, email included.
• If you can, lower the TTL to 300 seconds a day ahead. TTL is how long resolvers keep the old answer. At the common default of an hour or four, a mistake stays visible for that long; at five minutes, so does the fix. Some panels do not offer TTL at all, which is fine.

Which record: www or the bare domain

Type your domain without www into a browser and look at the address bar once the page loads. If it now starts with www., your site lives on www: that record is normally a CNAME (a name pointing to another name), and the bare domain only redirects to it. If the address stays bare, the site lives on the bare domain, shown in panels as @, and that record is an A record (a name pointing to an IP address).

Whoever asked you to make the change should tell you which of the two, the type and the value. If what they sent does not match what you see, stop and ask: editing the wrong one is the most common way a site goes down during a change like this.

Steps by provider

Roughly in order of how common they are in our sample. Menu names are taken from each provider's help pages in September 2026; panels get renamed, so the linked page is the authority if the words on your screen differ.

Cloudflare #

1. Open your domain in the dashboard and go to DNS → Records.
2. Click Edit on the row, change the value, click Save.

Leave Proxy status (the orange or grey cloud) as it is unless you were told otherwise. On a proxied record the public lookup shows Cloudflare's addresses, not the value you typed, so check the value in the dashboard. Proxied records have a fixed TTL of five minutes, which means the day-ahead step is already done for you. Cloudflare's guide.

GoDaddy #

1. Go to Domain Portfolio, select the domain and open the DNS tab.
2. Click the Edit icon on the record, change the value, click Save.

If the domain has Forwarding set up, GoDaddy locks the @ A record and it cannot be edited until the forwarding is removed. With Domain Protection on, expect a verification code before the change saves. GoDaddy's pages for CNAME and A records.

Amazon Route 53 #

1. In the AWS console open Route 53 → Hosted zones and click your domain.
2. Select the record, click Edit record, change Value, click Save.

A site on Route 53 was almost always set up by a developer or an agency. If that is not you, forward them the change instead of making it yourself: the zone often holds records that only they can explain.

Squarespace Domains #

Sign in to Squarespace, open Domains, click the domain, then DNS. Squarespace may ask for your password or a verification code. Find the row with the host name from your instructions (for example www). There are two cases, and which one is yours depends on where that row sits.

The row is under Custom Records and has a pencil. This is the usual case when the domain is registered with Squarespace but the site is built somewhere else.

1. Hover over the record and click the pencil.
2. Change the value to the one you were given, leave the rest as is, and click Save.

The row is in the Squarespace Defaults group and has no pencil. This is the case when the site itself is built on Squarespace: these records connect the domain to it, and Squarespace does not let you edit them one at a time. The only way to change one is to replace the whole group, and the group also holds the record for the bare domain (@).

1. Copy every row of the Squarespace Defaults group somewhere safe. That list is your undo.
2. Check that your instructions say what to do with the bare domain. If they don't, stop here and reply to whoever sent you the value: Squarespace's help says removing the group disconnects the domain from the Squarespace site and breaks PayPal payment links.
3. Under Custom Records, click Add Record. Choose the type, enter the host and the data you were given (the host is the same as the row in the group), leave the rest as is, and click Save. Squarespace reports a conflict with Squarespace Defaults and offers Replace Preset.
4. Press Replace Preset. The whole group is removed and your record takes its place. Then add the other records from your instructions, including the one for the bare domain.

In both cases, don't change or delete any other records. If your email runs on Google Workspace, its records sit in a group of their own and stay exactly as they are.

Squarespace's guide, with a video walkthrough of the same steps.

Wix #

1. Go to Domains, click the Domain Actions icon next to the domain, choose Manage DNS records.
2. Hover over the record, click Edit, change the value, click Save, then Save Changes.

This panel exists only for domains connected to Wix by nameservers; a domain connected by pointing is edited at the company it was bought from. Wix reserves www for Wix sites and answers "Hostname already in use" if you try to point it elsewhere by adding a second record, so edit the existing one. Wix's guide.

Namecheap #

1. Go to Domain List, click Manage next to the domain, open Advanced DNS.
2. Click the pencil on the record, change the value, confirm with the green tick, then click Save All Changes.

One host can hold only one of CNAME, A, ALIAS or URL Redirect. A new domain often has www set to a parking page through a redirect; if so, that row has to go before the new one will save. Namecheap's guide.

Hostinger #

1. In hPanel go to Domains, select the domain, open DNS / Nameservers.
2. Click Edit on the record, change the value, click Update.

If Hostinger's CDN is switched on for the site, turn it off before changing the www record; Hostinger warns that the change can break the site otherwise. Hostinger's guide.

IONOS #

1. Go to Domains & SSL, open the menu under Actions next to the domain, choose DNS.
2. Click the pencil on the record, change Points to, click Save.

The value of an A record can be edited, its host name cannot: to move a record to another name, add a new one and delete the old. IONOS's guide.

Anyone else #

Every panel has the same three fields: name (www or @; most panels add your domain to it, so do not type it again), type and value. Search the provider's help for "edit DNS record". If the panel refuses to save because the name is already in use, there is a second record on the same name: find it, and ask before deleting it.

Check that it worked

Back in the Dig tool, query the name you changed with the record type you changed. The new value usually appears within minutes; the worst case is the old TTL, which is why the day- ahead step above exists. Your own computer may keep the old answer longer than the rest of the world, so check the site on a phone with Wi-Fi off before deciding something is wrong.

How to undo it

Edit the same record and put back the value you copied. Undoing takes the same time as the change did: at most one TTL. If you did not save the old value and the site was on a hosted builder, the builder's help pages list the records it expects, and its support can restore them.

If you are connecting WebSpeed

We email you the record, its type and its value, and agree a time for the switch. Please change nothing until you have that email: the value is specific to your site, and pointing a domain at an address that is not ready for it takes the site offline.