Look up a domain's nameservers before you move it.

DomainTry an example

Your browser sends the domain to Cloudflare's or Google's public DNS and to rdap.org, which sends your browser on to the domain's registry (or Identity Digital's RDAP server directly for .io, .me, .sh and .ac). Ployz's server never sees it, and the server IP stays in this page.

Your server's IP (optional, for the records to change)

Look up

What the report shows

The registrar is the company the domain is registered with, and the expiry date is when the registration lapses unless it renews. The nameservers answer DNS for the domain, and that's where you change its records. A domain registered at one company often has its DNS at another, so the report shows both.

Below that come the records that decide where things go. A and AAAA records hold the server's IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. A CNAME makes one name an alias for another. MX records route email, and TXT records hold SPF, DMARC and the verification strings services ask you to add. CAA records limit which certificate authorities can issue certificates for the domain.

Moving a site without moving the email

To put a site on a new server, you change the bare domain's A record to the server's IP and point www at the same place. Email usually doesn't depend on either, so the MX and TXT records stay as they are. The report warns when it does: when there is no MX record, so mail goes to the bare domain's address, when the MX points at the domain itself, or when the SPF record lets the site's server send mail. The report names the email provider from the MX and SPF records, so you can tell the client which service their email stays on.

The report takes one address. Enter an IPv4 address and it lists every AAAA record to delete, because browsers that reach the domain over IPv6 would still go to the old server. If your server has an IPv6 address too, add an AAAA record for it afterwards. The report also warns when a CAA record would stop Let's Encrypt issuing a certificate for the new server.

Some DNS hosts answer with their own addresses. Cloudflare does this for a proxied record, and a flattened CNAME or ALIAS record shows up as A records. The records in the panel then differ from the ones the report shows. When a domain on Cloudflare's nameservers answers with Cloudflare's addresses, the report says so and names the records to delete by name and type instead of by value.

Sending it to the person with the DNS login

The person who can change the records is often the client or whoever set up their domain years ago. "Copy for your client" copies the records to add and remove as plain text, with the host, type and value for each, and a line naming the records to leave alone. It names no hosting product, so they can follow it in any DNS panel.