Moving your website builder? The domain is the part that breaks.
A shop moved its website from one builder to another over a weekend. The pages looked great on Monday. The email had stopped. Nobody could say who held the login for the domain, and the mail records that made email work had lived in the old builder's settings.
A website and a domain are two different things. The domain is a name you rent from a registrar. DNS records point that name at your website and at your mail. When you move the site, you usually change those records, and email depends on some of them (MX, SPF and DKIM).
Most trouble comes from not knowing where the domain is registered and who can log in there. Sort that out first.
What to do
- Find out where the domain is registered and who holds the login. Confirm you can actually sign in.
- Copy every existing DNS record into a text file. Screenshots work too. Pay special attention to MX, SPF, DKIM and any verification records.
- A day before the move, lower the TTL on the records you will change. This makes the switch take effect faster and makes a rollback faster too.
- Build and check the new site on its temporary address first.
- Change only the website records at cutover. Leave the mail records alone unless mail is moving as well.
- Send and receive a test email from outside your own domain. Check the site from a phone on mobile data.
When not to
If the new builder lets you keep the domain where it already is and only asks you to point one record, do just that and skip the transfer. Moving the registration itself is a separate job. Do not combine it with the site move.