Moving your domain and email without anything going down

Changing providers rarely fails because of the technology, but because of one forgotten setting. The website runs in its new place, but emails no longer arrive. Or they arrive, but land in your customers' spam. Both can be avoided if the move happens in the right order.

This post describes what to prepare, in which order to switch and when the old contract can be cancelled.

What actually moves

Behind an address like your-business.at there are several parts that can sit with different providers:

• the domain itself, registered with a provider,
• the DNS, the records that decide where website and emails go,
• the hosting the website runs on,
• the mailboxes your emails are stored in.

Not every move affects all four. First clarify what really needs to change. How these parts fit together is explained in Where your website actually lives when it is online.

Preparing: take stock

Before anything is switched, record the current state:

1. Logins: the current provider's customer area, access to DNS management, passwords for all mailboxes.
2. All DNS records: not only those for website and email. They include A and AAAA records for the website, MX records for email, TXT records for SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and verification records for services such as Google or Microsoft.
3. All mailboxes and forwards: including the mailbox set up only for your tax adviser's invoices.
4. Domain holder: is your business registered as the holder?

A forgotten TXT record is the most common reason a service suddenly stops working after a move.

The order that prevents an outage

1. Prepare the new destination. The website runs on the new server and the mailboxes exist at the new provider before any record is changed.

2. Shorten the validity period. Every DNS record has a validity period, the TTL. For that long, other servers may cache the old value. Shortening the TTL one to two days before the move shortens the time in which old and new values are around at the same time.

3. Copy old emails. Via IMAP, mailboxes can be transferred to the new provider with all folders. A second pass after the switch picks up whatever arrived in the meantime.

4. Switch the records. Website records to the new server, MX records to the new email provider, SPF, DKIM and DMARC matching the new sending setup. Copy every other record unchanged.

5. Transfer the domain if needed. Changing registrar is a separate step and can also be done after the switch. For most endings, it requires an auth code from the current provider.

Checking: how to tell everything works

After the switch, test specifically:

• The website loads at the address with and without "www" and with a valid SSL certificate.
• An email from an outside address to each mailbox arrives in the new mailbox.
• An email from the new mailbox arrives at an outside address and does not land in spam.
• The website's contact forms still send messages.

Do not cancel the old contract too early

Keep the old contract running for a few more weeks. As long as cached values are around, an email can still land in the old mailbox. Cancel only once no new messages arrive there and a final copy is saved.

The move as an opportunity

A move is a good moment to tidy up: mailboxes nobody uses, forwards into nowhere, domains that have long stopped being needed. What comes up in ongoing operation afterwards is described in What ongoing maintenance for your website includes.

bown sets up domain, hosting and email and runs them with hosting and maintenance, from €39 per month excl. VAT, including domain, email and storage, on servers in the EU.