The single thing that keeps business owners on a website platform they have outgrown is the fear of breaking their domain. It is a reasonable fear and it is also based on a misunderstanding. Changing where your website lives does not require moving your domain anywhere. Your domain stays registered exactly where it is, you change two records that tell the internet where to send visitors, and your email is not part of that change at all. Here is the whole mechanic, in plain terms, plus where to click at the registrars most small businesses use.
What is the difference between transferring a domain and pointing it?
Transferring a domain moves the registration itself to a different company. It involves unlocking the domain, requesting an authorization code, approving an email, and waiting up to five days, and most registrars block transfers in the first 60 days after registration or a previous transfer. Pointing a domain changes nothing about who it is registered with. You log into the registrar you already use, edit the DNS records, and visitors start arriving at the new site. Pointing takes a few minutes and is reversible in a few minutes. For a website move you almost always want to point, not transfer.
Which records do you actually change?
Two, and they are the same two on every registrar. One record covers the bare domain (shown as an @ symbol in most DNS forms, meaning yourbusiness.com itself) and one covers the www version (yourbusiness.com with www in front). Both are CNAME records, and both get the same value: the routing address your new host gives you. In Tibly you get those exact values on screen when you connect a domain, formatted the way registrar forms expect them, so it is a copy and paste rather than a decision.
- Record 1: type CNAME, host @, value = the routing address your host gives you.
- Record 2: type CNAME, host www, value = the same routing address.
- Everything else: leave it. MX records carry your email. TXT records carry domain verification for Google, Microsoft, and your email authentication. Deleting those is what actually breaks things.
Where do you change DNS records at each registrar?
The wording differs slightly but the path is nearly identical everywhere. You are looking for a DNS management screen, not a hosting or website screen. If you find yourself in something called Website Builder, Site Manager, or Hosting, you are in the wrong place.
- GoDaddy: My Products, find the domain, Manage DNS. Records are listed in a table with an Add button beneath it.
- Squarespace: Settings, Domains, select the domain, DNS Settings. Squarespace calls the bare domain record host @ as well, so the values paste in directly.
- Wix: Domains in your account, select the domain, Advanced, Edit DNS records. Wix hides this behind an advanced toggle on purpose.
- Namecheap: Domain List, Manage, Advanced DNS. The host field uses @ for the bare domain.
- Cloudflare: select the site, DNS, Records. If the proxy toggle (the orange cloud) is on, leave it on unless your host tells you otherwise.
- Google Domains: these moved to Squarespace in 2023, so follow the Squarespace path above.
Will pointing my domain break my email?
Not if you only change the two CNAME records described above. Email is routed by a completely separate record type called MX, and website traffic and email traffic travel independently. Your Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or registrar-provided mailbox will keep working through the website move because nothing in that path changed. This matters most for GoDaddy customers, where the same account often holds the domain, the website, and the email, which makes the three feel like one thing when they are not.
How long does it take to go live?
Usually minutes, occasionally longer. DNS changes propagate as caches around the internet expire, and how long that takes depends on a setting called TTL on your existing records. Most registrars default to an hour or less. In practice new visitors reach the new site quickly while your own browser, which has the old answer cached most aggressively of anyone, is often the last to update. Checking from your phone on cellular data is the fastest way to see the truth. After DNS resolves, the security certificate that makes the padlock appear is issued automatically, which adds a few more minutes on first connection.
How do you know it worked?
Three checks. Visit yourbusiness.com and confirm the new site loads. Visit www.yourbusiness.com and confirm the same, because a surprising number of moves get one and miss the other. Then confirm the padlock shows in the address bar, which tells you the certificate was issued for both names. Tibly polls all of this for you and marks the domain active only once routing and the certificate are both confirmed, so you are not left guessing whether a half-finished state is normal. If something is wrong, the fix is almost always a typo in one of the two record values.
